Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 299: Christine Grimaldi and "The Shadow and the Ghost"
238 Plays3 years ago
Christine Grimaldi blends memoir and journalism in her piece for the February 2022 issue of The Atavist Magazine.
Social: @CNFPod
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Sponsor: West Virg. Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Brendan as a Literary Personal Trainer
00:00:01
Speaker
AC and Evers, it's that time of year. You're getting on a treadmill. You might even be hiring a personal trainer for that hot body ores. But maybe your writing needs a boost, a personal trainer in its corner. That little something something that'll just get you where you might need to go.
00:00:19
Speaker
If you're working on a book, an essay, a query, a book proposal, and you're ready to level up, why don't you email me, Brendan at BrendanOmero.com, and we'll start a dialogue. I'd be honored to help you get where you want to go.
00:00:32
Speaker
Exactly. And that's where the magic happens, right? Like when a reader is able to connect those dots. Like that's making me smile right now if you could see me. It's also hard because, you know, I'm Italian, so we like to talk with our hands and just beat the horse dead. And I'm trying to really undo that.
Introduction to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast
00:00:58
Speaker
Oh yes, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going?
Interview with Journalist Christine Grimaldi
00:01:08
Speaker
It's that Atavistian time of the month where I speak with a featured writer. She is Christine Grimaldi, a DC-based journalist who has written a piece for the Atavist that marries memoir and reportage. I fucking hate that word. Let's just say journalism, okay?
00:01:25
Speaker
Spoiler alert, as always in the interview, so if you haven't read the piece, I encourage you to do so. Plan on it, and why wouldn't you? I mean, read the piece and then come and hang out with us. Sound good? Good. Alright. We get into the idea of grifters in this country.
Engaging and Supporting the Podcast
00:01:45
Speaker
Editing, of course, love of sentences, and a lot more. It's good stuff.
00:01:51
Speaker
But I want to remind you to keep the conversation going on Twitter at cnfpod or at creative nonfiction podcast on Instagram. You can also support the podcast by becoming a paid member at patreon.com slash cnfpod. As I say, the show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. Members get transcripts, chances to ask questions of future guests, special podcasts, you name it, shop around.
00:02:16
Speaker
It might tickle your fancy. Ew.
Promotions and Partnerships
00:02:20
Speaker
Free ways to support the show, you can leave a kind review or rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Written reviews for our little podcast that could go a long way towards validating the enterprise and also for the wayward CNF-er just passing by. We've stalled out quite a bit in terms of reviews. It'd be great to ramp that up again. Consider it. It doesn't take that long.
00:02:44
Speaker
show notes in my up to 11 monthly newsletter can be found at BrendanOmero.com. Once a month, no spam, so far as I can tell, you can't beat it. Another little note here, support for the creative non-fiction
00:03:01
Speaker
The podcast is brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan College's low-residency MFA in creative writing. Now in its 10th or 11th year, this affordable program boasts a low student to faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. What is it, Brendan? Is it the 10th year or the 11th? Pretty sure it's the 11th. Recent CNF faculty include Brandon Billings-Noble, Jeremy Jones, and CNF pod alum Sarah Einstein. There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Where recent faculty including Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend.
00:03:28
Speaker
as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple. No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or maybe even learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit MFA.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
Atavistian Podcast Format Changes
00:03:48
Speaker
So before we get to Christine, I sat down with the lead editor of the piece, Editor-in-Chief Saeward Darby. We talked for a while, and I think this is, might be a thing going forward. You know, the last year, in the first year of these Atavistian pods, we usually took five to 10 minutes to tease the story. But Saeward and I get into some stuff, man, and to quote rock rap philosopher Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit,
00:04:17
Speaker
We kept on rolling, baby. You know the time it is. Ruth.
00:04:33
Speaker
Nice. So we got a new one. This is great. In another year, this is year two of us doing this. I know. This is fun. I know. I'm glad we're still doing this. And it feels like it's something of value to you, and it's certainly of value to me. Yeah, no. It's also fun to just introduce the stories in this way and talk about them a little bit. It's one thing to tweet about them. It's one thing to email people about them. But it's nice to be able to talk about them.
00:05:03
Speaker
Of course. Now, say where it is, we're still, this is something I always kind of like to do usually in January, maybe the first week or two of February when I have people on the show. I still, it's the beginning of the year and I always like to get someone's impressions of how they're processing the new year, whether that's resolutions, whether you believe in that or not, or goals. And maybe for you as a, you know, professionally and personally, what are some things that you're looking to sharpen this on and process in 2022?
Atavist's Achievements and Diversity
00:05:33
Speaker
Gosh, it's a great question. The Adivast had a really fantastic year in 2021. So dynamic. It was really dynamic. Super dynamic. I agree. And we relaunched the website in April, and we've had this new look, which is really exciting.
00:05:52
Speaker
We published some stories that went, you know, just did incredibly well for us from a traffic standpoint. We sold some projects for film and TV. And, you know, it was just a really, really exciting year. Oh, we did our first ever narrative podcast in addition to doing this podcast with you. Like, it was just a very exciting and dynamic year for us. So I think, you know, in 2022, I'm excited to build on that.
00:06:17
Speaker
and to, you know, find different ways to do what we do. You know, thinking about different formats, thinking about different types of collaborations, partnerships, things like that. I'm definitely given the size and kind of scale of what the Audivist does. I never want to try to do too much. It's more like
00:06:37
Speaker
What can we do that helps us grow? Um, whether that means, you know, from a financial standpoint or a creative standpoint or both, ideally that isn't going to, you know, it risk diminishing what we already do so well. So like, how do we, how do we build as opposed to just how do we, you know, try to do more because it's there and you know, you can do more. That just doesn't make a ton of sense to me. So, so yeah. Um, you know, I don't have anything specific that I can tease here. We obviously have a ton of really great.
00:07:05
Speaker
stories assigned and we're working with some really amazing people and I have some partnerships in mind, some hopes on that front for co-publishing and things like that. We'd love to do another podcast. We do have a concept that's out there that's getting pitched to various companies.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah. And then, you know, for me, it's always very important, too, to think about, you know, diversifying our roster of writers, which is something that, you know, every media outfit is dealing with to one extent or another. And for us, you know, we've now gotten the third year in a row, if I'm not mistaken, that we had gender parity amongst our writers. And we obviously have a ton of diversity amongst our other contributors, like illustrators and
00:07:49
Speaker
But, you know, continuing to really keep tabs on who's writing for us, what they're writing about, and, you know, always working to, yeah, diversify, but also just, you know, add layers of complexity to the types of stories that we tell. So there's that. And then, you know, on a personal, I don't do resolutions or anything like that, but I was inspired this year. This is super corny, but I'm standing by it.
00:08:17
Speaker
So a slightly sad note to begin the point on, a friend of mine passed away at the end of last year after fighting brain cancer for a year. I lost a friend of brain cancer a couple of years ago too. He's like 30 years old. Exactly. A crime.
00:08:34
Speaker
Just really, really awful. And in the process of talking to or seeing people who knew him, I participated in a Zoom memorial. And somebody mentioned that in the last year of his life, he had been encouraging his friends to tell him about daily ordinary joys that they were experiencing. And I'm really not a terribly sentimental
00:08:58
Speaker
person but for whatever reason I was like I love that and so I actually have a little notebook and every day I try to write down one ordinary joy you know like something that makes me feel really happy like I was upstate in New York a few weeks ago and one of them was like sinking my boot into a deep fresh snow and
00:09:21
Speaker
As a journalist, one day I'm looking at my little notebook. I said, you know, the willingness of strangers to speak honestly, candidly, and generously with me, you know, things like that. And so that's probably the closest I've ever come in a new year to embracing some kind of project related to the fact that we are starting another cycle around the sun. So yeah, that's where I am right now in 2022.
00:09:47
Speaker
Well, that's great. When I recently had a conversation with Rachel Krantz, who has a new memoir out called Open, an uncensored memoir of love, liberation, and non-monogamy, and we were talking about awareness and meditation and everything, just kind of spitballing back and forth.
00:10:06
Speaker
And I told her, like, something that I tend to do, I always journal in the morning in a different journal. And then at the end of the day, my more bullet journal planner thing, I have, like, what I call is more or less a daily download. Just a few sentences at the end of the day, an analog way to close the day off, kind of a ritualistic thing that kind of triggers to my mind, okay, day's done.
00:10:24
Speaker
And part of that is more of a sensory download. So I think of what is a cool thing I saw, touched, heard, smelled, felt over the course of a day. And it's like the garlic on the oil on a hike, touching a tree covered in moss. And it's just, I don't know, it's just kind of a cool way that I've found to be like more connected in a sensory way throughout the world.
Christine Grimaldi's Family-Inspired Piece
00:10:51
Speaker
And then kind of read back on it.
00:10:53
Speaker
I found it really works, and I think it's kind of a cool way to try to connect with the world in a very sort of tactile way, if that makes any sense. It absolutely does. And I love that. And I think sometimes, or at least my understanding of this daily ordinary joy project and kind of why he was doing it and why friends were sharing those things with him was so that you were thinking about those small things, the feel of something, the smell of something, and realizing how little things can bring you
00:11:22
Speaker
even if just for a split second and make you feel more connected. I think that's exactly the way to think about it. So I think that I'm a terrible journaler. I'm just the worst. I've never been good at keeping one. I was horrible. As a girl, as a little girl, it was kind of like, oh, I should have a diary. Every girl has a diary.
00:11:40
Speaker
There's a number of diaries in my house, in my parents' house that have like two or three pages filled in, and then the rest is completely empty. I mean, astronomical, just a tremendous waste of paper. And this is something where I feel like it's just jotting down something small, but also at the same time, like kind of forcing me to think about my day in this more intimate sense.
00:12:02
Speaker
And I really, so far, I've really enjoyed doing it. And I have successfully done it every day. We'll see how that goes for the rest of this year. I mean, ask me in a month, and we'll see how many days I've missed by then. But, yeah. Well, that's great. And I've probably told you this, and I know I've told the audience innumerable times, that I've had a journal since I was 16, 17 years old. So it's like 25 year.
00:12:29
Speaker
thing that I've done and part of the reason why I think it it stuck and is not a thing that became one or two pages and then kind of giving up is that it started so I always I named it from day one it was the O'Mara Chronicles haha and but
00:12:49
Speaker
the idea was so my best friend who is still not you know we're we've lost some touch just from geography in life but he's still I consider him my best friend and in high school he did luge you know the thing where you slide down the ice and everything
00:13:07
Speaker
So he was on kind of the Olympic track at the time in high school, and so he was forced to spend several months, definitely several weeks, sometimes several months away from school. So I started this journal to chronicle every day that he was missing.
00:13:26
Speaker
And then wherever he was in Europe, the first edition of the Chronicles, I mailed it to him to catch him up on it. So actually, my journal, my journaling practice started as this act of quote unquote service to keep my friend abreast of what was going on in a semi humorous way. And then when he got back and he was no longer on the road as much, I just kind of the habit was formed and I just kept going anyway to kind of just have a
00:13:56
Speaker
I have a log of what was going on in my life day to day and that of course has evolved over 25 years but it started as this thing of keeping track for a friend not for me but for somebody else and that ingrained the habit. So I don't know if there's any lesson there but maybe it's like okay maybe if you reframe it in this idea that it's for something else other than yourself then maybe that's how you can imprint the habit of journaling.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, I actually really like that. And I've never thought about that. But yeah, you know, obviously, I'm not doing this, you know, for someone per se. But I just really liked the idea. And I, you know, at this point, kind of doing it in someone's memory to a certain extent.
00:14:40
Speaker
And maybe, you know, maybe that was just the push I needed to do, to do something on a daily basis. And I'm also, you know, like there was one day where I realized I had just been too busy seeing a friend and walking our dogs in the snow that I just hadn't thought to write anything. And so the next day I was like, you know, daily ordinary joy is being like so wrapped up in the day that you're having that you forget to write.
00:15:02
Speaker
something in your journal, you know, like, and, you know, just not applying pressure. I think that's the other thing is, you know, I'm a person who, if I say I'm going to do something, I then put a lot of pressure on myself to do it. And so, and so, yeah, not, not, you know, putting too much pressure on myself is probably a good thing too.
00:15:19
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Oh, that's great. And so we can segue into the piece of the month, starting the first one that's kind of officially published in 2022 by Christine Grimaldi. And this piece is a little, in my experience of the past year or so of doing these with you, it's a little more memoiristic. Of course, there's the journalistic approach to it, but it does have a personal thread through it.
00:15:48
Speaker
that we haven't seen in a little while. So I wanted to maybe get your impressions of what it was like for you to accept something that had that memoiristic spine, you know, for the Atavist and what that contributed to this piece.
00:16:03
Speaker
The story is so fascinating. And we do probably one of these type stories a year or so. The last one that really jumps to mind, searching for Mr. X was to a certain extent, but really the last one I can think of is Castles in the Sky, which came out in November of 2020. I'm sorry, I'm like, the pandemic has completely screwed with my sense of time. Yeah, 100%.
00:16:32
Speaker
The year before that, there was one in December 2019 called Lost in Summerland. And this new piece, The Shadow and the Ghost, is very much in keeping with those stories, which, as you say, blends memoir and some very deeply personal stuff with a more journalistic approach, a question. And in this case, I don't want to give too much away, but the writer has this beloved grandmother and
00:16:59
Speaker
You know, one of the things that struck me when she first pitched it was the way she described her relationship with her grandmother. She referred to her grandmother as her soulmate. And I was very like, that kind of stopped me in my tracks because I'd never heard someone refer to, you know, either a parent or a grandparent that way, you know, that jumped off the page, so to speak to me because I was like, wow, that.
00:17:19
Speaker
that's a special relationship. Like if that's something that you hold that deer that you're describing it like that. And sort of the twist is that she thought that she and her grandmother shared pretty much everything. And then it turns out that her grandmother had a secret more or less about her own childhood that after she'd passed away, Christine found out about and then has dedicated years to trying to understand and be able to tell the story of
00:17:48
Speaker
And so, you know, her relationship with her grandmother alone was something that I was admittedly just very, very interested in knowing more about and why it had meant so much to her, why it had been so special. But then, you know, the fact that there was this, it turned out there was this huge gap in her knowledge of this person who she considers her soulmate. And she was seeking to fill that in. So I was very moved by just the whole, I mean, every aspect of it, quite frankly.
00:18:14
Speaker
And then the other piece of, and this is purely geographical for lack of a better way of putting it, a lot of what takes place in this story takes place in a neighborhood just south of where I live. So when Christine pitched it, and Christine lives in Washington, D.C., a lot of the story takes place in Brooklyn, I was immediately like, I have to walk down there.
00:18:35
Speaker
I was like, I have to go see specific addresses where some admittedly kind of terrible things happened. And I'm a big sucker for stories like that, not specifically about Brooklyn, but about any place where the story is in part about
00:18:54
Speaker
the actual location where someone is. And it's a location where people still are. And then it's kind of like peeling back the layers, basically, of who has lived there, what their lives have been like. And I found that to be another really compelling aspect of the pitch. Yeah, so we said yes.
00:19:14
Speaker
To that point of a soulmate subverting the trope of a soulmate, that really resonated with me because with no disrespect intended to my spouse who I married 11 years ago, I often feel like my soulmate, and I alluded to this earlier, was my buddy Pete that I wrote that journal for.
00:19:38
Speaker
in more ways than not I almost find that like he's kind of like my kindred soulmate and there's nothing romantic there at all and in the traditional sense it's just like he and I have just been on a wavelength unlike anyone I've ever met and that there's like no disrespect to my wife but it's just like we associate soulmates with this person that we marry and maybe that is the case for some people but I think there is
00:20:07
Speaker
immense value in saying like sometimes that soulmate might be just a really good friend and it might be a grandmother and it was really nice to hear that in Christine's piece and hear you echo that. Yeah no I completely agree with that and you know it it's not romantic. I mean there are romances that take that happen in the story. There are people who do fall in love in a more traditional sense but just the fact that like
00:20:35
Speaker
Her depth of love for her grandmother ran so incredibly deep, and Christine too is in a relationship as a spouse. I'm certain she would say no disrespect to him. But I don't know, I was just very mesmerized by the way she described her childhood with her grandmother.
00:20:57
Speaker
that alone kind of sucked me in. Would that have made for an out of his story? Probably not. But then on top of that, her grandmother had this just really monumental kind of story that she had been a part of as a child.
00:21:13
Speaker
And it really allowed Christine to look at her own self and her feelings toward her grandmother. And it then allowed her to delve into some really fascinating history and history in the United States, history in Italy, history of immigration here, history of a religious movement, just all kinds of stuff that really
00:21:35
Speaker
you know, bring the story to life. And yeah, it just has a really special mix of elements. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know she's keen to write a book at some point about this, and I feel like she definitely has the goods to do that.
00:21:53
Speaker
Now there's a moment early in the story, and I spoke with Christine a few hours ago, and I asked her about this idea of her grandmother's secret was her inheritance. And she was quick to say that that was something that Sayward inserted in as a note.
00:22:15
Speaker
And I wanted to get your sense of what triggered you to sort of inject that into the story and for her to then adopt it as part of the theme that really sets the story in motion.
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, well, I was very interested as I was reading earlier drafts of the story and talking to Christine, and we had lots of long phone calls talking about various parts of the story and characters in the story and everything. This idea that her grandmother gave her so much in life, so much love, so many memories, so many lessons.
00:22:54
Speaker
And then she died and she left this gap, but the gap was in and of itself a type of gift because what Christine had decided to do for a living as a writer, as a reporter, she had the tools to fill in that gap. And so this idea of inheritance, not necessarily as something that is concrete, that is discreet, but maybe something that gives you a sense of purpose, gives you
00:23:21
Speaker
gives gives you uh something to do like actively um and i just thought that there was she it was something it was one of those things i was very kind of her to say that like i inserted that in a note it's not like it you know came out of my own random thoughts like it was because i think this was what she was at the time
00:23:37
Speaker
in this phase of editing getting at, right? She was writing a lot around this idea of my grandmother gave me something and I was like, it gave me something to do. And like that is something that without her and without this being a secret, I would not have had. And so I think more than anything, I just used the word inheritance for the first time.
00:23:55
Speaker
And so you were talking about sort of subverting tropes, right? Or expectations. And in this case, you know, subverting what we mean traditionally by inheritance. We're not talking about money. We're not talking about items. You know, we're not talking about a name, right? You know, your familial name. Like, we are talking about something that takes
00:24:17
Speaker
doing to ultimately understand, but is no less of a gift. And so I just, to me, that was what Christine was trying to say, and my job as an editor is to kind of help shape things into a more succinct language at times. And I think that it definitely helps frame the piece and helps frame
00:24:42
Speaker
what we see Christine doing throughout the piece because it toggles between more present day or in some cases her childhood and the distant past. And kind of using this idea that her grandmother had given her something that she was then working to understand and sort of framing that as her inheritance. Yeah, just I think helps the reader really understand what's going on in the piece.
00:25:09
Speaker
Hearing you talk about that and the secret being an inheritance, it kind of reminded me of in the final Harry Potter book where Dumbledore gives Harry, Hermione, and Ron sort of very cryptic inheritances to help them find their way.
00:25:31
Speaker
And I just it just popped into my head right now and it's just like okay it is a little cryptic and it's not just handing you something on the plate but this idea of here are some clues to fill in the holes I can't help you anymore because I'm gone but here I think are the things that might lead you down the right road
00:25:51
Speaker
To find the answers you're looking for whether in my story and then of course bridging it to your own through Generations, right it had that vibe, right?
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I will confess that I've never read a Harry Potter book or seen a Harry Potter movie, so like- Say a word. No, I vaguely know who those characters are, but yes, it sounds like a very good comparison, the way you describe
Is America the Ultimate Grift?
00:26:19
Speaker
it. In this case, you know, it wasn't that her grandmother had given her clues or, you know, kind of, I certainly hadn't prepared, you know, this wasn't like some conscious
00:26:29
Speaker
idea that she had. I don't think that, you know, well, when I'm gone, like, Christine will have, you know, these tools to understand my secret. I think it's more, I don't know what the word is that I'm looking for. Here I am. I need an editor to help me find my words. I think that, you know, she made Christine into the person that she was, right? Like, it is. They used to watch 2020 together every week. And
00:26:56
Speaker
She really helped Christine find this love of journalism. She also made Christine the compassionate person that she is and shaped her in all these different ways that then when she became aware of this secret, she was ready to be able to go down the path of finding answers and understanding this thing.
00:27:22
Speaker
And so, yeah, it's just, again, it's just thinking about inheritance in this more broad sense and also kind of multifaceted sense about, you know, what the people who love us and leave us, you know, who leave us behind at some point, you know, what they give us and what we take away from our relationship with them, just really kind of
00:27:47
Speaker
I don't know, blowing that idea open in a way. So, yeah, I mean, it really it's just a really special story, I think. Yeah. And Christina and I got to talking about what this country lends itself to the grift in the grifter and people looking to take advantage
00:28:11
Speaker
people in a vulnerable vulnerable states and someone who's kind of a snake sweeping in it goes back centuries and she even said like America itself might be the ultimate grift how did the idea of the grift and America maybe as a grift like maybe cross your mind
00:28:36
Speaker
Oh yeah, I mean this is definitely something I thought about a lot and we talked about too at various points that, you know, this character in the story who goes by the name Reverend Mother, who's a religious figurehead who really shaped Christine's grandmother's life. You know, she's the kind of person, fast forward to today, and you can imagine her being
00:29:00
Speaker
what are the snake oil salesmen and women of the 21st century where somebody who is peddling myths, who is peddling conspiracy theories, all because it gives them a sense of importance and superiority and a position of
00:29:20
Speaker
power in one way or another, and is also taking advantage of other people's vulnerabilities. And this is something, I mean, yeah, we just through every phase of American history, there have been people like this in any number of parts of our culture, whether you're talking about religion, you're talking about the economy, you're talking about just kind of society, the arts, like just any number of places. And I think, you know,
00:29:49
Speaker
Christine has a great line in the piece where she talks about the myth of the American dream versus American reality. It reminded me of this class I took in college approximately 25 centuries ago.
00:30:03
Speaker
called American Dreams, American Realities, point being the whole class was framed around looking at the founding myths of America and the way that they have manifested over the centuries. And so certainly religion played a huge role in that, kind of a beacon on the hill, but also this idea of prosperity gospel,
00:30:28
Speaker
And all of these things that we continue to see, if not articulated in exactly that way, continue to really hold a lot of power over people and to shape immigrant experiences especially. And, I mean, I appreciate Christine saying that, you know, America might be the ultimate grift because I think there's really something to that.
00:30:50
Speaker
Um, and that's, that's a thought that's going to just fester in my mind now. Um, but, uh, but no, this was, and this was the other like really beautiful thing about this story. It's so personal, right? It was very much about Christine and her grandmother and a family of very specific people, but at the same time, it's a story that I think lingers with you because there are ways in which you're like, God, this feels pretty universal. And, you know, I'm not Italian Catholic or Italian Pentecostal, both of which, um, you know, are.
00:31:18
Speaker
religions that played into Christine and her grandmother's life, lives. But I was raised in a pretty conservative place where religion was really important. And I went to Catholic school for nine years. And so there was also these elements of my interest was like thinking back on my own experience with religion as a child and how it shaped me for better or for worse.
00:31:39
Speaker
And I think that that's something that a lot of people can relate to. And even if they can't relate to it from a Christianity perspective, they can potentially relate to it from the standpoint of what is something in my life that felt religious, felt like it was so consuming of my time, of my family's time.
00:31:57
Speaker
it so defined who we were, and thinking back on why was that? What was my family hoping to get out of it? What were the people who were in charge hoping to get out of it? And I think, yeah, so even if you're not an Italian immigrant from Naples or have that lineage, there are still things about this story that are going to, I don't know, tap into something. And I do think it's in many ways like a story for
00:32:25
Speaker
the Trump era as well, which I still really do think we're in, because bigotry and discrimination and the process of becoming white in America, who gets to become white, who doesn't get to become white, and why whiteness as a measure of power is such a powerful force for people, like a thing that they want to have some piece of. And that all comes to bear in this piece over the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.
00:32:54
Speaker
in those flashbacks, but then also, you know, I think it's going to feel really familiar to readers. Yeah, it's just, it's a story about everything. And getting to the point where it feels familiar to readers, like the grift is happening today and she even notes, well, Christine even notes that,
00:33:13
Speaker
There's this there's a play that Reverend Mother produces like the the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ a play in 12 parts and basically she is plagiarized scenes in the Bible apparently and and Christine writes like what hubris it took to copyright a story from the Bible
00:33:30
Speaker
with that level of confidence and another era Reverend Mother might have been a televangelist or religious Instagram influencer. So like there it is, it's bridging this grift from then to the griffs of today. Right, right. And I mean, you know, I'm personally interested very much so in
00:33:50
Speaker
the way that people find these gurus, so to speak, find these people who are telling them what they want to hear, but also asking a lot of them. And that's something that we still see now, whether it's in a more traditional sense of going to church or being a part of a community that is more
00:34:16
Speaker
insular in whatever way. Or, you know, I mean, my gosh, like, the amount of times I've gone down a rabbit hole on, you know, Instagram or something following, you know, individuals who have basically built their entire livelihood on, you know, claiming to have authority about something that they don't really have authority on. You know, that that to me is just I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated. There's that's America in a nutshell, you know, fake it till you make it.
00:34:43
Speaker
It's America in a nutshell where it's like, you know, make money off of, you know, whatever you can, quite frankly. And I think, yeah, that that moment in the piece is a really nice bridge to to the present day. And, you know, showing the ways in which yeah, this this might be in all the ways that this piece might seem strange to people because things about it are like, Whoa, that's crazy. Like, I can't believe that happened.
00:35:08
Speaker
at the same time, you know, within the things that are unfamiliar are things that I think are really going to strike a chord. And these conversations that you and I have ahead of talking to the writer, I'd be remiss if I didn't actually talk about some of the editing process of this. And Christine's early draft, her early draft that she submitted to you was 27,000 words. The final product is around 16,000.
00:35:32
Speaker
So, we're cutting 30%. What was that process like of cutting that down, honing the focus, everything that goes around, cutting something from that to this?
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, this was an interesting editing process because the 27,000 words she turned in were very good words. There were just moments where she wasn't trusting herself enough as a writer, where I felt like, for instance, she would say something and then she would almost need to prove that what she just said was true and not in a way that was...
00:36:07
Speaker
Basically, to give an example, when I went back to her and I said, your writing is so strong, this is such a compelling piece. We had some structural issues to talk about, but nothing insane. And then I was like, what we really need to do is cut. It's just too long for the material. I was like, cut all of the quotes from books or experts. Trust yourself as a writer. Trust yourself to convey to the reader the things that you as a writer have absorbed in your research.
00:36:34
Speaker
um and so you know just go through and unless you feel like something you just can't live without it strike it assume that your words are are strong enough so there was definitely that aspect of it and then there were some parts where she was going down like uh what's the word i'm looking for
00:36:51
Speaker
you know, more like kind of personal rabbit holes of things that were important, but could be said in a much more succinct way. And so what I, what I kept telling her was save it for the book, save it for the book. You'll have a book and you can go down so many of these pads go off on these tangents. You can have a whole chapter about, you know, this, this, this. And for the sake of, you know, really keeping the pace and, you know, depth of this piece where, you know, of course it's an art, not a science, but like,
00:37:20
Speaker
keeping it at a place where I felt like it was its natural shape. It wasn't so much that anything was bad. Nothing was bad. It was more, what are we doing here? What are we trying to achieve? What are the things that can, and I even said, don't erase anything, save everything, because I think these are things that you can absolutely build on in a longer context.
00:37:43
Speaker
So yeah, it was a combination of trust yourself as a writer because you are a good writer. And then also, there are things you can save for the book and things that will be more impactful and meaningful if you save them for the book because you can actually go the length and distance you need with them. Whereas in the piece, it was like, well, you're going down this rabbit hole, but you're not quite getting to where this feels like it's gone deep enough that it will mean something to the reader. Because if you did that, you would have to go so far that you're
00:38:12
Speaker
how do we get back to the spine of the story? And so we had a lot of conversations about this. And it's not always the case that somebody has in mind that they will be writing a book at some point about the topic. And knowing that going into this was also really helpful because it was just a reminder of
00:38:30
Speaker
you know, think about the form, think about the platform, think about the audience, and then think about all the things that you can do when those aspects have changed. So yeah, it was actually, it was a really fun editing process. I hope it was fun for Christine.
00:38:46
Speaker
I think it was because when I talked to her about it, she was like, I love the editing process. It's like the words are already there. And now all we're getting to do is make it better. And she was like all about it. Like it was great. Like it wasn't precious to her that the what she had written was set in stone. She was just like, OK, here's the ore. And now let's like mine it for the best gold. So yeah. Yeah.
00:39:14
Speaker
Absolutely. And I tell her and I tell writers this all the time, you know, so much of my job is, you know, talking to like, if you think of it as like a sculpture, right? And the writers like, guess what, I have this big hunk of clay that I'm gonna do a thing with. And you know, I'm there to kind of help think about what should it look like? What's the
00:39:33
Speaker
you know, what shape should it take? You know, what size are we talking? You know, is there something that it should maybe be looking like? You know, a model, you know, kind of thinking about that stuff before they've even started, right? And then once they've actually done the shape, I'm getting in there with like the chisel and the, you know, the little, I'm not, oh my God, I'm not an artist, but like whatever tools you use to like get those curves just right, to like scrape off that last little, like that's,
00:39:59
Speaker
they've already done the heavy lifting. They've already done the shaping that gives it ultimately the form that it needs. And I'm there to help find sometimes things need to be lopped off because the thing's not quite holding together. It's tilting over or whatever. But in this case especially, she shaped it. I looked at it and said,
00:40:22
Speaker
I think it can be, I think it can be tighter. I think it can be sleeker. And she went and cut out, you know, 10,000 words or whatever it was. And then, um, and then I went in and, you know, helped with that, with that detailing. Yeah, it was a, it was definitely, and she was, I love it when a writer, cause I'm the same way about editing. I'm like, yes, please make it better. Tell me, tell me what's wrong. Um, so yeah.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, because even though you cut those 10,000 words, the remaining body of work is energized by those cuts in some way. Right. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, I always tell people better to write long than to write short because we can talk about what needs to go. Yeah. And so, you know, don't dump your thoughts on your, you know,
00:41:10
Speaker
all your sources and put it all out there, please make it organized. But yes, put it all out there. And in this case, it got to the point toward the end of the back and forth editing before we went into fact checking and copy editing everything, where she would write me a note and she'd be like, should we add this back in or should I save it for the book? Or should we cut this and save it for the book? And I would reply, essentially, save it for the book or don't save it for the book. That was the point we were getting to.
00:41:37
Speaker
Because at no point was it like, oh, this is like, you know, doesn't matter or is meaningless or, you know, really isn't doing much. It was it just wasn't right for the the reported essay she was she was putting together. And so Save It for the Book became a little bit of a refrain. It's like, yeah, kind of a mantra for this. Save it for the book. Save it for the book.
00:42:02
Speaker
Fantastic. Well Sayward, always a pleasure. This is great to unpack the piece and by design I wanted to, and it just happened this way, but kind of by design. It was great to actually talk a bit longer and get a bit more long-winded about this thing instead of just like cramming it into five or ten minutes. So this was great to really kind of get into the thick of some of the themes of
00:42:28
Speaker
unpacking this kind of work and how you go about it and how Christine went about it. So that's who we're going to kick it over to in a few more minutes. So as always say word, thanks for the time and thanks for all your amazing insights. It's incredible. Thanks so much for having me and for highlighting the activist. It's always a pleasure. Now batting Christine Grimaldi.
00:42:57
Speaker
Christine is a writer based out of Washington DC, and her work has appeared in Slate, Dane Magazine, The Toast, The Morning News, and she covered Capitol Hill for a Bloomberg subsidiary for a while, and now she has an Atavistian feather in her
Balancing Political Writing and Narrative Nonfiction
00:43:12
Speaker
cap. So why wait? Here's my conversation with Christine Grimaldi.
00:43:26
Speaker
Congress and the White House and all different sorts of federal agencies in DC with longer narrative nonfiction, with writing essays, with kind of stepping outside the box and writing stuff that really, I don't know, that like really moves me in a different way, that I'm attracted to writing in a different way. I can't ever give up on the politics or the policy of it all because I really care about
00:43:48
Speaker
what's happening and how it impacts people. But I started a master's degree in creative nonfiction part time while I was a congressional reporter full time. And there is a reason that I did that because, you know, that's just a part of me. Where are you getting this CNF master's?
00:44:05
Speaker
Oh, I am. I finished it at Johns Hopkins, but not the MFA program. I once told a famous writer, or maybe it was a famous writer. I was at a reading and I introduced myself. And this was when I was like very new into kind of literary writing. And I was like, Oh, I'm getting my MA in writing. And they asked, oh, where? And I said, Johns Hopkins, not realizing that
00:44:30
Speaker
There was a big, fancy MFA program in Baltimore. And I just remember the writer saying, fancy. I was like, really? I mean, this was a time when, like, bread loaf was mentioned in the program. And I was like, what's that? Is that like a snack or something? I was very much in the lane of journalism and had always kind of wanted to transition more into this kind of writing. And it was a whole new world for me that I'm still kind of learning about 10 years later.
00:44:58
Speaker
Nice. Well, I understand you're a sentence thief. So tell me more about your sentence thievery.
00:45:05
Speaker
wow, you really went back into the archives. I think when I first started out writing more literary, nonfiction, essays, what have you, I had a real reliance on trying to quote other people's thoughts because I also, when I read sometimes, if I read just like a great sentence, I'm like, wow, maybe this is the jumping off point for something that I write myself, or maybe I can incorporate this with attribution somewhere,
00:45:32
Speaker
I've kind of had to break myself of that over the years. And I think I've done so pretty successfully. You know, for instance, when I started writing the Paisano of Shame piece, I really envisioned it as like,
00:45:45
Speaker
interviewing other Italian Americans with like-minded politics. And then I realized I was just doing a straight journalism and I really wanted to just express myself. And I guess I transformed that piece into more of an essay, right, where I'm doing research and sometimes quoting from other works, but I'm really trying to give my own opinion. I think that can be scary sometimes.
00:46:10
Speaker
So I've maybe moved on from the sentence thief to someone who's just trying to figure out how to express herself in writing.
00:46:18
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And at the crux of that is trying to develop your own kind of voice and your own character on the page. And by character, I just mean kind of who you are and how it sounds like you. And it's uniquely Christine Grimaldi. And in that particular sentence essay you had written, when I fall in love with sentences in the literature I read, I want to recreate them in my own voice with my own content.
00:46:41
Speaker
And so embedded in there is trying to find your own voice. So as a writer, as someone who's looking to cultivate her own voice, how have you started to build that muscle and to develop something that is wholly you on the page?
00:46:56
Speaker
I think sometimes when you first start feeling a sense of yourself, you have a really, not a bad instinct, but just the instinct to shout it very loudly. And I did that in the first draft of the Atavist story, right? It was 27,000 words. And it was
00:47:17
Speaker
a lot more expressly political about how I viewed certain things that I found in my research. And with an editor as amazing as Sayward, she was able to help me kind of express the same things I wanted to, but far more subtly in
00:47:38
Speaker
in about 10,000 words less than what I had had. So I think, you know, trying to figure out what my writer's voice is, is trying to strike that balance between, you know, being authentically who I am, but letting that come through the writing and not worrying about making the writing shout it, right? Like it should just kind of be evident there. And I'm still working on that, but the activist editing process in particular was a very, very good learning experience of how to do that.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah, that can be especially challenging when we're emulating people we greatly admire, be they at Joan Didion's or David Foster Wallace, John Jeremiah Sullivan, people who are very pyrotechnic on the page. You're like, oh, I like that. I want to try to do that.
00:48:22
Speaker
And then when you impersonate that, you find that it comes across as very labored. And then as you try to maybe emulate that too, it comes across as extremely showy, and you end up hijacking your own story by trying to be so artful, and sometimes you just really have to step it back.
00:48:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite writers is Alexander Chee, and I was just rereading how to write an autobiographical novel. And there are some more expressly political essays in that collection, but even those are, you know, they're not hitting you over the head, right? Like they're really just conveying what needs to be conveyed through the words and through like these beautiful, beautiful literary sentences. So that's what I, I guess I've been trying to figure out and hope to keep moving in that direction.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, the not hitting the reader over the head can be really hard because you have to show a tremendous amount of restraint on your part. And that can come through the rewriting page. Maybe you are overtly saying like, this is what it is and I am telling you how it is. But then through the actions that you can carefully report and curate, you can then step back the language and then leave a sort of liminal space there for the reader to kind of connect the dots that you have since retracted in the part of your rewriting, I imagine.
00:49:44
Speaker
Exactly. And that's where the magic happens, right? Like, when a reader is able to connect those dots. Like, that's making me smile right now if you could see me. It's also hard because, you know, I'm Italian, so we like to talk with our hands and just beat the horse dead. And I'm trying to really undo that. Right. Well, I'm 50% Sicilian, so I totally get where you're coming from. Wait.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah, my mother's maiden name is Meniachi, and her grandparents came over from Sicily, so yeah, so I've got that in me, you know, the handsy talking and certainly the blood running hot.
00:50:30
Speaker
Why don't you get this? Yes, yes, yes. Now, here's a quote I stumbled across from James Clear's newsletter. I think this really speaks to what it means to be a freelancer and the numbers game that it entails. Now, I want to get your impressions. So he wrote,
00:50:50
Speaker
The person who gets one shot needs everything to go right. The person who gets a thousand shots is going to score at some point. Find a way to play the game that ensures you get a lot of shots. And I think that really speaks to there's inherent rejection in journalism and everything. He's referring to athletics, but we can really imbue that onto what we do. So what comes to mind when you heard that? Oh, just the sheer amount of
00:51:17
Speaker
pitches it takes to get one piece placed, right? And especially the kind of writing I want to be doing more of the the essays, the literary nonfiction, it's just it's so difficult. And it is a numbers game. And it's a numbers game. But there are also certain editors and publications you want to work with, right? Because you want it to be the best possible version of itself. And you know that it can be if you
00:51:40
Speaker
if you're collaborating with certain people, with certain insight. But I remember on my Paisano of Shame piece, which is probably the other proudest thing I've ever written, I think I sent it to 20 something places. And a lot of it was never hearing back. Some of it was very kind rejections from people who were interested. And at some point you just start to feel pathetic, right? Like, why do I believe in this so much?
00:52:09
Speaker
maybe it's not good at all. And I do think that there is something there, instead of trying to gaslight yourself into thinking, wow, I'm the worst possible writer ever, which I think every writer probably feels. I do think that there is something there to taking a step back and evaluating, okay, is there a reason why this is being rejected just besides the media hellscape in which we live?
00:52:35
Speaker
Do I need to bolster this argument? Do I need to tailor this piece of the pitch? Do I need to make something more or less explicit? But if you really believe in something, I think it is worth taking the time to see, is this worth continuing to send out? And if the answer is yes, you keep going. And then you find that one magical editor who says, yes, we will publish this. And then the policy reporting is its own.
00:53:03
Speaker
It's slightly similar to that because covering reproductive rights and abortion in particular, you know, it's a very quote unquote hot topic right now. You know, since we are probably several months away from losing or Roe v. Wade being severely undermined.
00:53:20
Speaker
But even those stories can be particularly difficult to place because abortion for a long time has not just been like the third rail of politics, it's been the third rail of the media that loves to both sides it to death. So, you know, it's kind of the same thing. Like if you really care about, you know, a policy issue and the people who are impacted by it on a daily basis, I mean, you just keep trying.
00:53:45
Speaker
Now with the piece that you wrote for the Atavus, which combines memoir and also like sort of deep historical research, as we look to unpack that a little bit, I want to go back a little bit to what you were saying, this having been a 27,000 word thing came down almost 10,000, and you're saying about the editing process was really eye-opening. So take us to the editing process and what that was like for you to
00:54:13
Speaker
to kind of see the light and get the best piece out of that initial draft.
00:54:20
Speaker
First of all, I love the editing process because editing means you have already written. You have words that you have to just make better, right? Or you have a piece that you just have to improve, but the words are already there. Even if you have to write new words, you have a jumping off point. So it was really thrilling in that way and exciting, you know, it being my favorite part of the writing process.
00:54:45
Speaker
working with Sayward was amazing, which is probably a refrain that you hear often on this podcast. It sure is. Yeah. So like I said, I think I turned in a draft that had everything in it, every thought in my head about the archival process, about the interviewing process,
00:55:07
Speaker
Every, you know, detail that I had uncovered over, you know, 10 years of researching and reporting and interviewing on and off. So really the first step, and this is a testament to say where it's trust in me as a writer was.
00:55:22
Speaker
can you cut about 10,000 words? Because I think that this is what, there is, the story is here. We just need to unearth it. And then once I was able to do that, she was able to come back to me with, you know, some conceptual edits and some line edits, you know, like build this out here, but more like, okay, like let's pair some of these sentences down too.
00:55:45
Speaker
There's a part early in the story too, you said a decade after Nanny died, I quit my latest journalism job, but no small part to investigate what happened to the love of my life. So maybe you can just talk a little bit about your grandmother and the relationship you had that really springboards this piece into motion.
00:56:03
Speaker
she was the greatest. And it's hard because I think that there is this Italian American, you know, grandma trope of like the, the grandma with the pot of sauce on Sunday morning stirring. And I wanted to be very careful, because she was
00:56:25
Speaker
the best person in my life and to this day, you know, remain so really. But I also didn't want to glorify her. You know, there were, you know, she was a flawed person just like anyone else, right? And we did have some opportunity to introduce a flaw or two of hers, which I was really grateful for. But, you know, to be raised by someone like that, to really, like,
00:56:51
Speaker
I don't know, bond with them in a way that I don't think I've bonded with most people in my life. I mean, besides my spouse and some of my friends, but to have that with her, I don't know, it just feels like walking back into a cocoon.
00:57:07
Speaker
Is this all very cheesy? 36-year-old woman goes back, flashes back to childhood. That was one of my favorite sections to write because I really got to relive so much of that time with her that I really hadn't thought about in such exacting detail in so many years. I know someone who just loves you unconditionally for who you are and who you could be someday, giving you that latitude because I have changed.
00:57:34
Speaker
in some ways not at all, and in some ways so much from who I was when she was alive, but knowing that she would be probably just as in love with and accepting of, and not just accepting of, but celebrating the person that I am now, like, to have that confidence in our relationship and in her as such a gift.
00:57:56
Speaker
And you write, too, at the end of the first chapter that she may have been shielding you from her pain, but she gave you a final gift, and this was a secret, and the secret which you took to be your inheritance, so to speak. When you started to uncover that secret, what was the sound going off in your brain as you were starting to uncover your grandmother's childhood and the conditions under which she was raised?
00:58:25
Speaker
Oh, well, first of all, I have to give credit where credit's due to say word who really champion that idea of inheritance. And I think that was a line that she had put in to the piece and really made me think about, you know,
00:58:38
Speaker
having been given this inheritance, what do I do with it? Which is something that I thought about for the rest, the rest of the writing process and the editing process for sure. I think the sound that went off in my head was ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Anytime I found something new, my therapist has talked a lot about like intermittent rewards, which is like how people sometimes get trapped into toxic relationships, right?
00:59:04
Speaker
with the person who just like sometimes intermittently rewards you or like if I if I give my rabbit a treat, pet rabbit, his name is Arthur Fonzarelli. If I give Arthur a treat sometimes, I think he'll probably be more excited by that that if I give him a treat every time.
00:59:21
Speaker
Maybe this doesn't work for pet rabbits because, to be honest, he just wants a treat every time. I think it's more of a human thing. The point is, you know, journalism is really hard because a lot of times it's just not getting the answers that you want or need. And so any time I, you know, found something about Reverend Mother or my grandmother or if a detail from, you know, one of my aunts or my uncles
00:59:50
Speaker
testimonials matched up to something that I found in an archive or on newspapers.com or what have you, it was just like this big dopamine hit, if that makes sense. Yeah, like when you're panning for gold, you're looking for things, and you find that thing, you're like, oh, I doubt anyone's really seen this before, and now I'm gonna like tuck it into my little satchel here, and I'm gonna synthesize this into something awesome.
01:00:18
Speaker
Yeah. So like maybe not the healthiest for relationships, but for journalism, I think it's what keeps us going, right? And I don't begrudge that because it is a really hard industry and often a lonely process.
01:00:34
Speaker
you know, like lonely work, right? Like going to an archive with a N95 mask on all day to try to find like that little piece of gold like you were talking about. And I think it is probably like the healthiest dopamine hit that you could ever get.
01:00:49
Speaker
I think it, oh my God, I'm blanking on the author. It'll come to me and you might know it, but he's written several books. I think most recently might've been Fantasyland. Oh, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt. Anyway, Kurt Anderson, there we go. He wrote Fantasyland and it was kind of like a history of America, and I haven't read it, I just have heard about it, but it's kind of a history of America, but almost like talking about just how this place has been really,
01:01:19
Speaker
I don't know, a fertile ground for like grifters and charlatans and everything.
American Myths vs. Reality
01:01:25
Speaker
And it made me think of Reverend Mother here and how, what is it about maybe our culture and maybe in the culture of the Reverend Mother too where, you know, a grifter can really sort of take root in a community.
01:01:40
Speaker
Is it appropriate to say or maybe it's necessary to say like the country's a grift in a lot of ways? When you build America on stolen land and slavery, and then promise a bunch of white people an American dream. This is maybe me on the soapbox again. But, you know, there is just such a discrepancy between, you know, the foundational principles or so called principles.
01:02:09
Speaker
of America and then, you know, what is promised to people, right? And, you know, even these, you know, white immigrants who came in, some of them, a lot of them, the Irish, and then until they were assimilated because they accepted the grift and then the Italian Americans who were discriminated against until they accepted the grift. There was a real gap between their daily lives, which I fully recognize
01:02:36
Speaker
were so difficult and harder than anything that I've ever had to go through, you know, making like a dollar a day, like sewing buttonholes. And then this American dream that they were promised, but it was accessible to them, right? Because, because of their whiteness, because of the caveats of the principles that the country was founded on. So I don't know, I think that America is like particularly
01:03:01
Speaker
ripe for grift because, you know, there is that sense of it where that concept of it baked into, I guess, baked into our democracy. Yeah. And now partway through the piece, too, you start after a page break, say, how does a false prophet rise to power? And so how does a false prophet rise to power?
01:03:26
Speaker
Promising to fulfill that gap between, you know, acolytes, reality, right? Like the, you know, sewing buttonholes for a dollar a day, and then this American dream, like, you know, the term, and I'm gonna butcher the Italian, but it was La America, right? It just came up over and over again, like in the reading that I did. And there was just so much emphasis placed on like how amazing that could be. And oh, so for instance, in,
01:03:52
Speaker
maybe this is a better analogy, in the 27,000-word version of this piece, I had a section that started with, you know that movie, An American Tale? It's a cartoon by Disney from, I think, the 90s. I remember watching- Is it a Fievel thing? Yeah, Fievel. Fievel. Fievel? Fievel, yeah. A little mouse. Fievel. Yeah, the Fievel Mousekowitz, and all the Mousekowitzes are on the ship to America,
01:04:21
Speaker
And they all start singing this song with the other mice from different countries. There's an Italian mouse who's adorable. But the song goes, and there are no cats in America and the streets are filled with cheese. And yes, that that definitely needed to come out of the piece. But like, that was a real, a really good way of thinking about how this was able to happen, right? Like how somebody like Reverend Mother
01:04:48
Speaker
was able to dangle that cheese and in her instance, the promise of salvation.
01:04:53
Speaker
to people, to her own people, which is just really sad to me in its own way, right? Like to take advantage of fellow Italian immigrants. But it wasn't unusual for like this to happen at the time, right? Like I talk a little bit about Amy Semple McPherson, who in her evangelical denomination is still active today. So I mean, say what you want about her, but she probably did fake her own kidnapping. And Father Divine, who did some amazing work
01:05:22
Speaker
you know, against segregation and for reparations. I mean, he also did think he was
01:05:28
Speaker
the black Jesus Christ who needed money from his parishioners. And then he also had like these weird celibacy rules. So like some marriages broke up among his followers, but he took two Mrs. Divines or mother divines. So like, you know, all of these kind of faith healers or religious leaders at that time who were dangling the, you know, the American tail cheese in front of people were also making exceptions for themselves.
01:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, you write two later like what hubris it took to copyright a story copied from the Bible with that level of confidence and another era Reverend mother might have been a televangelist or religious Instagram influencer. And it's like a play that she appropriates for her conquer for her flock and and everything. It's just like it's so spot on that she would she would just totally capitalize on you know with that hubris and then capitalizing on the insecurity of people needing
01:06:26
Speaker
needing some degree of salvation even if it means like splitting up families. Yeah, yeah, and I mean I remember being so excited to find that piece. It was at the Library of Congress and I mean I live in Washington DC so to find that and something else of Reverend Mother's that she copyrighted like 20 minutes from my house was just incredible. But I remember being so excited that it was going to reveal something to me because
01:06:51
Speaker
There are so few things of hers. You know, writings and these recordings that I've been desperate to find but haven't been able to of her on the radio. So few of them, if any, survive. And then I had my Italian translator friend translate the play for me. And she was like, this is basically copied from the Bible.
01:07:14
Speaker
And it's written in a mix of Englishiano and Italian-ish. I was like, oh, God. But then what does that tell you about her? It tells you something different and probably more important, right? That appropriating or copying this tale out of the Bible, she thinks that she should get all of that glory, maybe instead of like the angel Gabriel or, you know, Jesus.
01:07:40
Speaker
Now, how did you balance the personal with the journalism in this piece? I don't think I put too much of myself in the first draft, besides the hammering home voice, right? Which was mostly in the third person. There wasn't a ton of first-person stuff, if I recall correctly.
01:08:05
Speaker
I tried to bring myself in like when I was talking about nanny as nanny, right? Like not as Jenny. If I was talking about Jenny, I tried to stay in the third person and really like let my grandmother and her siblings speak because in a way, not in a way, I mean, it's their story. And I wish that they were here to tell it. And I wanted them to be able to speak especially about a lot of the trauma that they had experienced. I think one of the only times
01:08:35
Speaker
I came in in one of those third person sections as a first person narrator was talking about her assault by the chauffeur because I wanted to like help pull out some of that story. She really only had a couple of sentences about it because I think it was really hard for her to relive.
01:08:52
Speaker
I tried to draw this distinction between, okay, there's going to be more personal stuff that I'll write as I, and then there's going to be more journalistic stuff, even when it comes to my family, that I'm probably going to write from this more removed perspective.
01:09:09
Speaker
Now, when you spoke earlier about the secret being your inheritance, there's ways to look at that, too, where someone passing leaves this thing to you and you want to honor it, but maybe it could also weigh you down. It could be baggage.
01:09:27
Speaker
I wonder if that's something over the course of writing this piece that maybe you wrestled with or maybe finishing the piece made you feel lighter. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it kind of struck me that inheritance can be a gift, but it can also be something very heavy.
01:09:45
Speaker
I think what ended up being heaviest was feeling like I had enough to write, because as much as we talked about the dopamine hits of journalism being amazing, and my God, they are. I think it always felt like, is this enough? Do I have enough?
01:10:03
Speaker
And at some point, I needed to write. And I love writing. I mean, like I said, I really love editing, but I do love writing. And that was able to kind of pull me out of rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole of research, which at some point,
01:10:20
Speaker
is not healthy, right? Because I'm never going to be able to uncover everything. And I think that's been the hardest thing to accept. And I mean, even having finished this piece, there are, my God, there are some things I'd really love to know. And I have delusions of grandeur of
01:10:37
Speaker
maybe some 95-year-olds writing in after they somehow read this piece on the internet, you would be amazed. There are some really tech savvy octogenarians and non-enginearians that I've spoken to over the course of this process. But yeah, I think for me, that was the biggest baggage, followed by secondary baggage of a lot of people are dead.
01:11:00
Speaker
And that's just sad to me. I had a lot of help from genealogist friends and friends I made who work as genealogists during this process who I am just eternally grateful for and to. And it's just I don't know if they've reached a point and maybe they have in their professional careers of like, wow, like I'm mostly working with researching about dead people. And for me, that's still really upsetting that, like,
01:11:29
Speaker
Most of the people are dead in this piece now we're recording this on a Sunday well Sunday morning for me Sunday afternoon for you and you recently tweeted you know when I say that 10 years of reporting and 16,000 words went into this moment and this is out of his teasing out your story you said I mean I get excited people it's nearly time to read
01:11:50
Speaker
So as a writer, as someone just in this mess who's pitching and getting rejections and then landing something like this and doing the work you did on this, what does this moment mean to have this story out there?
01:12:06
Speaker
Um, I think it's flipped for me because I think I told say word, um, several weeks ago, I was terrified and excited, but now I'm mostly excited and then somewhat terrified. That may flip again tomorrow. I don't know. I mean, I just have visions of.
01:12:24
Speaker
getting everything wrong, but that's before any story goes up. And I mean, there was this amazing fact checking process at the Atavist that caught all sorts of things, you know, from like a misspelling of something to like two inverted words in the life insurance company title.
01:12:44
Speaker
But I think I think it is a little terrifying to in addition to like, oh, did I get this detail wrong? Oh, did I get that detail wrong to open up and to be more open about my views and more personal in my writing? Like, that's something that I wanted for a really long time.
01:13:02
Speaker
that it's been probably the hardest to get placed as a freelancer and it's still it feels good but it's it's scary too right like it's not just it's not just me writing about Congress now well it's gotta you gotta feel like there's a feather in your cap here like you got to feel proud for yourself right oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean I gotta I gotta like I
01:13:29
Speaker
I take a deep breath to be able to say that. But yeah, I'm proud of myself. Well, I hear like I'm I'm I'm someone who will the minute something good happens to me, I'll find a way to shit on it. So it's like I'm trying to find ways to like recognize when something positive happens and give myself credit for things. And I just want to, you know, just hearing you say like how terrified you were. I'm like, this is I just I just want to hear you say what an accomplishment it is.
01:13:53
Speaker
I appreciate you encouraging that because like as a woman, I feel the need to like doubly shit on it. So, you know, like as a writer and then like as a woman, like just, just take a, take a huge double ship. But I think that
01:14:09
Speaker
Wow, I can't believe I said that on a podcast. But I think that saying that I'm proud of it is a good thing, and feeling that is a really good thing. And I think when I see it, I will really believe that it has all happened, like that this has happened from pitching it to, to publication, I just like can't believe it sometimes. Right.
01:14:30
Speaker
Nice. And I just have one final kind of weird wonky question, which I might actually clip and put to the beginning. But it's a I'm a bit of a notebook junkie. Love notebooks. I'm a paper and pencil guy. And I think a lot of writers are kind of like this, too, and especially reporters. So like, what's your kind of your go to notebook? What are those tools that you that you geek out on?
01:14:54
Speaker
Oh, you know, I have very bad habits left over from doing a journalism every day. And I will fribble on anything. Sometimes makes it hard to keep track of things.
01:15:10
Speaker
then I will collect them all at the end. I'll scribble on index cards, I will start notebooks and then not finish them. I have a tendency to write, you know how reporters notebooks go, they're longer than they are wide. You tend to write maybe three or four words on one line and you're just going down instead of across. I even do that in regular size notebooks, just because that's how my brain is trained to take notes.
01:15:39
Speaker
stuff is everywhere. I have to get a little bit better at trying to keep things in one place. Organizationally, at least on the desk, they're in one place, but it would be even better if they were in one notebook.
01:15:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. My favorite notebook these days, and it's a little small, but I kind of like it because I can really talk. I can talk in my back pocket and it fits there. It's the heavy duty field notes notebook. It's it's got a really sturdy chipboard so it can take a beating, but it's also like a built in clipboard. So it's not a flimsy notebook. And like I said, the paper is kind of small and you can fill it up really quick.
01:16:21
Speaker
But I really love how durable it is. Field Notes also makes a journalist one, which is the long, classic one. And the paper is nice, but it's far too flimsy for my taste. So I love that really sturdy chipboard in that small notebook. And like I said, it's about the size of a phone. And you can really fit it in your back pocket super easy, and it's super sturdy. So I love that one. And like I said, I can geek out on notebooks all day long. I'm going to have to check that out.
01:16:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, I dig it. I swear by it. And it's yeah, it's just as someone who loves analog anything. It's a it's a fun thing to use. It's a fun thing to use and play with.
01:17:02
Speaker
Listen, when you've been on the hill and you have to take notes and highlighter because you are just the reporter who forgot to bring a pen, like you'll just do anything. You'll just write down anything any way possible. Well, well, Christine, where can people find you online and get a little more familiar with you and your work if they're not already familiar with you?
01:17:23
Speaker
Sure. I am a on and off tweeter at CH Grimaldi on Twitter. I have a very outdated website that I need to update www.ChristineGrimaldi.com. Fantastic. Well, Christine, thank you so much for the work and for the time coming on the show and talking a little shop. This is a lot of fun, and I wish you the best of success going forward. And I look forward to talking to you more down the road when more of your work comes out. Oh, yay. Thank you.
01:17:59
Speaker
Sayward Darby and Christine Grimaldi, everybody. Give it up. Give it up. Round of applause.
01:18:07
Speaker
Come on. Thanks to them. Thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing for the support. Thanks to you, the listener, for coming on this CNFing ride. It's a different one, isn't it? It's a little wonky. One of the tires kind of squeaks. It might be a ball bearing thing, but we keep going, don't we? Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. Maybe consider leaving a rating or review.
01:18:30
Speaker
wherever you you podcast that Apple podcast written reviews are amazing leaving a little rating on Spotify that's starting to be a thing why not they help validate the enterprise as I said earlier in the show of course feel free to share and link up to the show on social media and be sure to tag the podcast at CNF pod so I can give you that digital fist bump or my patented James Hetfield gifts they are not patented but that's kind of what I like to do
01:19:00
Speaker
I usually have a parting shot of some kind for people who might be new to the show, and there might be, given that this is with Atavistin. But I'm low on time today, so you'll just have to stick around for episode 300. Holy shit. In a few days for a parting shot, which I put at the end of the show, because I'm not a monster. So in the meantime, stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.