Episode 3: Mother Is a Form of Magic with Johanna Copeland
Happy Friday, readers!
I want to thank you for the growing support of this endeavor. I’m so excited to hear all your takes on these titles!
In case you missed it, last week, I sat down with Claire Messud and talked with her about family archives and how to write about your kin. You can listen here.
This week, I got the chance to talk with Johanna Copeland, author of Our Kind of Game, on sale now with HarperCollins.
Books On Tap
Johanna Copeland joins me to talk about finding community post pandemic and creation in the time of motherhood. Johanna’s novel, Our Kind of Game, came out this summer with HarperCollins. She is a former corporate attorney and fellow northern Virginia resident.
#FridayReads
This week’s shoutouts go to Suzanne Kamada, who read The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev, critic Christian Lorenzen’s love for books over screens, Tina Divick’s first brush with Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman, and the Sussex County Library System in New Jersey for promoting the adventures of reading. Thanks for participating!
Tell me what you’re reading on X, Threads, or comment on this post.
Canon, Or Can It?
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story about guilt, shame, and female sexuality. Here, I discuss Hawthorne’s famous denouncement of America’s “scribbling women,” and where he falls in early American literary canon.
Six Recs
My graphic novel recommendations are: Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands and Hark! A Vagrant, both by Kate Beaton, The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, Berlin by Jason Lutes, Patience by Daniel Clowes, and The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way.
All titles mentioned in this Episode:
Our Kind of Game by Johanna Copeland, The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev, Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Will Gluck’s Easy A, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton, The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, Berlin by Jason Lutes, Patience by Daniel Clowes, and The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way.
Got a hot take on one of these titles? I want to hear it!
Thank you so much for being part of this readerly community. Share your #FridayReads on X, Threads, or Substack!
Find me on X, Substack, Instagram, and Threads.
The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.
Episode Transcript:
BP: Hello, readers! Welcome to my new show, The Book Maven: A Literary Review. This is a podcast where we'll dive into the hottest book world trends, address some of the great or not so great classics, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode, but first, I recently talked to Johanna Copeland, author of this year’s Our Kind of Game, about being the one in the driver’s seat when it comes to completing a book and how to build a better sense of community in life and as writers. Join us in conversation as we chat about how Johanna got started as a fiction writer.
BP: When did you start writing and I don't mean, you know, the, I mean, certainly many of us start writing in childhood, but when did you start writing and submitting or writing and saving, if you will?
JC: That's such a good question.Yeah, I never wanted to be a writer. You know how some people are like –
BP: Okay, so you weren't writing in college or in law school?
JC: Not at all. I was reading. I was always reading. I took the Oregon bar first because I wasn't sure where I was going to end up. And then I got a job with my law firm and they said, you need to take New York and New Jersey bar. So I was doing that my first year while I was practicing while I was studying for that, those two bars, and by the time I got to the New Jersey bar, I was like, I, I got this.
I've done it three times. This is my third time. And so I think I had a copy of Jane Austen, like, Maybe it was Mansfield Park. I don't remember, but I was reading Jane Austen because my high school education, I went to high school, very small high school, which is definitely the inspiration for the high school in the book and not a good high school, not a, you know, there, as I got out into the world, I realized there are major chunks of my education that were missing, like my literary education.
And so I think some point in law school, I was like, oh, I'm going to sure that up a little bit. And so I just started going through all the classics that I had missed. It’s like, I got to read those because, like, I am going to be a person in this world and people keep making references and I don't know what they're talking about.
So I need to, like, fix that. So, I was reading Mansfield Park during the lunch break of the, like, while I was taking the bar. And somebody came up to me and they were like, talk about relaxed, you know. But, so maybe I should have known that I was going to be a writer because I was always reading. Just, you know, even while I was studying or working, I always had a book in my hand.
But I don't think I started really writing until my daughter was born. So 22 years ago, just a few, just a mere two decades.
BP: Okay. No, that's really interesting because that can be an impetus for I think many women, you know, not just, well, obviously, you know, you've just created something, but again, this child, but I think having a child and watching that child grow is, goes by so quickly. You know, as Kelly Corrigan says, the days are long, but the years are short.
JC: Yes. I’m feeling that now.
BP: And I think a lot of women turn to writing at that time. I'm thinking maybe this will help me something down.
JC: Absolutely. And I wish I had written—my son in particular was just kind of like the king of very funny statements and I didn't write them down. I wish I had as many of, I wish I had written more of them down. I was more like, I'm going to write fiction. I think for me it was more like the kind of transforming from just this corporate girly to suddenly you're a mother was a form of magic. And so I was like, I want to capture more magic in fiction because I was writing fiction mostly.
BP: I love that so much that transforming into a mother is a form of magic. I will not steal that from you, but I want people to hear it. I want them to, you know, that is beautiful. And I have not heard that before.
JC: But it happens so quickly, right? Like when, I mean, it does, you are a mother while you're pregnant, but then all of a sudden they send you home with a baby and you're a mother.
BP: That is one of the most astonishing things. And it didn't feel like that with our second child, but with the first child, I thought they're letting me take this tiny little human home in this suit.
JC: Yes, I have this funny story that I tell about my daughter when she, when she was in the NICU mostly because, she, I'm sorry, she's in the kitchen now and she's going to make a little noise, I hope that doesn't mess up the recording. She was in the NICU because I had a fever when I gave birth, but she was fine. So I went home from the hospital, I had like a full night of sleep before they let me take her home. So I, we bring her home. And she's like right by the, you know, right by the bed. And at some, some point in the night, I wake up and I was like, oh my gosh, like, what's that noise? You know? And then, like, it was like these thoughts that just sort of like came kind of like, I would say, 10 seconds apart. Like, what's that noise? Like, oh my god, that sounds like some, like a baby crying. And then, like, like, wait a minute. That's my baby. That's my baby crying. And then I'm like, someone needs to get up and deal with her, and I'm like, oh my god, that someone is me. Like, I need to get up.
BP: That someone is me. And you know, in a way, that's, you know, I try not to say things like book baby and book birthday because I think they're, you know, a little cutesy.
JC: Yeah.
BP: When you're writing, when you're writing, there is no one else to attend to that manuscript except you. It is you.
JC: It is you. It does not happen to where they are.
BP: And, you know, it reminds me I was going through some old photos, and I came upon one from, you know, the year in high school, or is it in middle school, when they give them the doll that's like a baby, and it cries and everything.
JC: I think that was middle, that's middle school.
BP: Middle school.
JC: Yeah.
BP: So I got a picture of our younger daughter with the baby. And I remember how upset she was when this baby would, and you know, you're supposed to soothe it or maybe it's just gonna cry.
JC: Right.
BP: So, so angry about it. And I thought two things. One, we used to let people of that age have babies.
JC: I know.
BP: And number two, how can we, if we can see, you know, whatever she was at the time, 12 or 13, you know, a 12 or 13 year old being so enraged and rattled by a baby's cry, why are we so surprised when a stay at home mom in the suburbs falls into depression or rage or some kind of psychosis or whatever, why are we so surprised and in a way, this is something that happens in Our Kind of Game, because it's about how needy a child can be and how far a mother can go to meet that need, which is the opposite of Monroe.
JC: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think in some one of the themes, I would say. Is, kind of like loneliness and the way that we are all alone. And I would say we have moved to being ever more so alone since the pandemic. You know, we have all of these bubbles of space that we've created, but that being said, we were already alone because we are more separated than ever from our families. Children are so scheduled that if, I remember thinking when my kids were little, I'm not going to be that parent. I'm not going to overschedule my kids. And then I'd be like, yeah, like drop your kids by and they'll just play outside. But nobody's kids could come by because everyone's kids were scheduled. And so I, I finally was like, okay, fine. I guess we have to schedule things for you guys to have a social life. But as the mother, you're sort of managing and you're kind of pulling the strings, but you're not necessarily having any time for deep connection.
BP: Right.
JC: And there is a scene in there where I think where Stella, you know, she pulls over in her car and someone comes, a neighbor comes up to her car and she's hoping for that moment of like real connection and she gets like—chat about the weather, you know, or, or like something just so meaningless. And she's like, why, why are we so disconnected? I mean, I think that's part of her frustration where she's like, I just want to connect on a deeper level and I don't want to talk about how my tomatoes are growing in the garden.
BP: Johanna, we live in a community that revels in talking about the weather, the tomatoes, whether or not there'll be a casino at Tyson's, and finding real community and real connection can be very difficult here. We could do an entire conversation on that, but I, I, what I'm thinking, too, is you and I have both and I, and I think we'll close with this for today, be this is fascinating to me and is in a conversation in and of itself as well.
JC: Mm-Hmm.
BP: Even though we didn't know it in our separate homes in the same little city, we've been living through this progression of looking for community in the wrong place.
JC: Yes.
BP: Because we're writers and other writers are our tribe, if you will. Right, right. I try not to use the word tribe very often.
JC: Yeah, yeah.
BP: But I think it's the right one when it comes to creatives, you know, and I, I, I was looking at New York for so long. I was looking, at media and, more of a pundit kind of thing. And then to realize, no, no, you're a writer. And that means sometimes you are going to be lonely.
JC: Absolutely. I think it's, and we, to bring it back to what you said, is because you are the only person who can birth that work. That work demands you. And so, and it's really hard to explain that to somebody who isn't doing that kind of work because they're like, oh, well, can't you just like, you know, can't you just do it later?
BP: Right. Or can't you just do this favor for me because you're at home?
JC: Yes.
BP: And, you know, it's such a tough thing, and they also want to know, what is it you do all day?
JC: Right.
BP: You can't describe it.
JC: It looks a lot like playing on your computer all day.
BP: Yes.
JC: Right? And so until there's real product, it kind of looks like you have a pretend job that doesn't really count.
BP: Thank you again for joining us today Johanna. You can find Our Kind of Game wherever books are sold. Now let’s jump into some of the books that you all have been reading this past week in our segment Friday Reads.
So we're back with another set of Friday Reads posts and as usual I've got my producer Jordan to help me show them off to the fullest extent. So what have we got this week Jordan?
JA: All right starting things out, we've got a post from Suzanne Kamada. She says, I'm reading The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev.
BP:I love this. I love Sonali Dev. She writes rom coms with a Bollywood beat and is just a great person to follow online. I think this looks like a really fun book. Great cover.
JA: We've got from @kudera #FridayReads #WritingLife. It's a retweet and it says books and magazines are better than websites.
BP: You know, I have to say, I agree, with my colleague, the critic, Christian Lorenzen and let's face it, Christian Lorenzen. I don't always agree with the essays and reviews that he writes, but he is definitely a spark in the literary universe. And I think he's right on with this particular post.
JA: All right, so now that we've got that straightened out, we've got a post from Tina Divick who says, Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman finally got around to it.
BP: I love the fact that Steal This Book, she finally got around to it. I cannot resist that. Abbie Hoffman was the, I don't know, was he the original Yippie? The person who wanted to actually change the world through activism. Let's face it, he was the person Yippie is about, the Youth International Party. He was also a member of the Chicago 7. He was a real activist and someone who did not agree with the system as it is. That's probably relevant right now, I'm sad to say. So Tina, I love that you're reading Hoffman and uh, pass that book on or let someone steal it from you.
JA: All right, and then we won't steal anything from them, but we'll borrow from the Sussex County Library System.
BP: Nice.
JA: Who says what will you read this weekend? #FridayReads, #SCLReads, #SCLSSummer. And they've also got a nice graphic.
BP: They do have a great graphic that says adventure begins at your library. What are you reading? And it shows a boy on a hike with binoculars, he's reading a book, he's got his little backpack on, he's sitting on a rock, and right behind him, as he reads, is an enormous gorilla who, of course, is from the book, and not from the actual forest he's in. Because, adventure begins at the library, and they have this great thing at the bottom, they say, Show us your Friday Reads #FridayReads, and this is a terrific way of helping younger readers feel like they're part of things, part of the library, part of what's going on online, and part of also the whole process of storytelling and readerly input into our stories. So I'd like to say a huge bravo to the Sussex County Library System, and that is Sussex County, New Jersey. Thanks for taking part in Friday Reads!
JA: Always exciting to have Jersey representation on the show.
BP: I know it. And there we go. We've got a Friday Reads Roundup. Thank you, Jordan.
JA: Thank you.
BP: The literary canon is filled with both undisputed classics and some more questionable choices as well. But every once in a while you get a book that somehow found its place in the canon for reasons that even the author couldn’t have seen coming. That might be the case with this week’s book: The Scarlet Letter.
The rumors are true. Hester Prynne is pregnant, but her husband is nowhere to be found. Given that she lives in a 17th century Puritan community, you would hope at least someone would have considered this an immaculate conception. Instead, our leading lady was labeled a capital A adulteress, signed and sealed with a big scarlet letter embroidered on her smock.
Look, who can blame those nail biting townspeople caught up in their own uncertain invites to heaven? I guess it's true what they say about guilt. It sticks with you. Even when you flee a country, sail across the Atlantic, and start an entirely new state. It endures.
Of course, women cheat. And of course, female characters make bad choices. My favorite kind of female characters, in fact. But must teenagers across America read about the endless public shaming of a woman who only gets caught because IUDs weren't invented yet? It's not like it was her literal and spiritual job to stay a virgin— We'll get to that. In her defense, Hester's husband was presumably lost at sea and she was seeking a little divine comfort. I mean, can't we just CAN IT?
Well, let's take a look at the bigger picture.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is a story about guilt, shame, and female sexuality. Ah, in the true American tradition. The all male town authorities discredit and ridicule a woman for her promiscuity and declare that she spend the rest of her life publicly repenting for her sin. 19th Century America brought us writers like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Alcott.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best selling title of the decade. Hawthorne himself wrote in a letter to his publisher, “America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women.” Caught somewhere genre wise between those heady transcendentalists and scribbling women, Hawthorne couldn't find his exact footing.
We often forget The Scarlet Letter has a frame story. The present day narrator finds a surveyor's records and a fabric scrap embroidered with the scarlet A, which inspire the narrator to tell the 200 year old fictional tale of Hester Prynne. But we lose this frame after the preface. Hawthorne couldn't make up his mind: write a story about telling stories, or write a compelling story. In a transcendentalist's hands, The Scarlet Letter would be a dense essay about public shame and breaking the rules. And in the hands of a scribbling woman, well, we would finally get Hester's perspective.
Because of Hester's fate, it can be argued that The Scarlet Letter contains feminist themes. Once the words hit print, whatever happens between the story and the reader no longer has anything to do with the writer or their intentions. Modern readers may read this story through a feminist lens, but I don't think it was written through one. Hester's public shaming is, of course, a double standard.
The town only found out about her extramarital extracurriculars because she got pregnant. What about her partner in shame? It's unfair he gets off scot free without any physical evidence of the act. No baby bump or scarlet A in sight for him. She won't narc on him either. Keeping his identity to herself is the only semblance of privacy she has left.
But is it her privacy she wants to protect or the man himself? He won't turn himself in since he's too busy telling other people how to get into heaven. That's right. He's the town minister, Reverend Dimmesdale. And in a Reddit worthy twist, years pass and the lost husband finally makes it to Boston, where he spies on Hester to see what she's been up to while he was captured by Native Americans.
Rather than, you know, I don't know. Communicate? Hester's jealous ex takes on a new identity as the town doctor, Roger Chillingworth. Meanwhile, Reverend Dimmesdale develops a heart condition. Get it? Over the years, as the stress of this secret eats him alive. What do you know? His failing health requires the town doctor to stay with him.
Chillingworth suspects that Dimmesdale is the homewrecker and is determined to make it public. But he just needs proof. One night while Dimmesdale's asleep, Chillingworth sees it. An A branded on his chest.
Guilt and shame are related. Both require feeling bad for immoral actions. The key difference is that guilt is felt in private, and shame is always public. Hester Prynne can and does live with the shame, but can Dimmesdale live with the guilt? The real loser here is Dimmesdale. The dunce who committed half the crime, took zero blame, and suffered a lifetime in silence.
Next to that, Hester's fate isn't all too bad. She admitted to her sins and built a beautiful life with her daughter, Pearl. Hawthorne, whether he likes it or not, invented a symbol for the reclamation of misogynistic public shame. Think Emma Stone's Easy A and Anna Delvey's latest court appearance.
Hawthorne may have been a chauvinist pig, but thanks to other nameless or canonimous writers, we will can-on this tale of feminist comeuppance. You know I love a statement piece.
And while the Scarlet Letter may have been an accidental statement piece, here are some Graphic Novels that are very much in control of their narratives.
I'm back with Six Recs and they're of my favorite graphic novels from the past 10 years. Believe me, choosing just six was not easy. But, that's all I have. So Jordan, let's start the clock and see if I can talk about all six in three minutes.
JA: All right, we're rolling.
BP: Thank you. Ducks, Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton. This is way, way up there on the list. Kate Beaton actually spent two years working in Alberta's oil sands. It's hard to describe what these oil sands are. You've got to read Ducks because it is about ducks. It is about oil. It is about hard labor. It is about, you know, working class people, but it's also about misogyny and trauma and what happens when you return to a different place in your life after having experienced something that is so, so important to you, yet also really painful. It is beautifully done. It won all kinds of awards. Please check out Ducks by Kate Beaton.
Number two for today is Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do. And The Best We Could Do is about how her family came over from Asia, and it was not an easy trip. It was, it was one of those things that involved a lot of also pain and hardship because they were actually escaping from the fall of South Vietnam in the early 1970s, and they had to build new lives. The United States Bui now lives in Minnesota, and it's all about very modern, very contemporary, very immediate people. This is a beautiful, beautiful memoir, and it's important that it was done as a graphic novel. It does help you understand all of these people as fully realized human beings. It's very visceral.
On to something a little bit lighter, Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant, which is just hilarious. So, Kate Beaton is a New Yorker cartoonist and Beaton will take on anyone. This came out in 2011 and it, but in this one, Hark! A Vagrant, it's all about revolutionaries and artists and poets and suffragists and people who were fictional as well. It's hilarious. There's everything from Kierkegaard to Yeats to. Oh, I don't know who else, um, I'm, I'm trying to, uh, you know, look at all of these different people and every time I look at something that Beaton draws and writes, I want to stop whatever I'm doing, including recording this and read her instead. So that will give you an idea of how much I love Kate Beaton's very interesting, very well researched and also wildly funny books
Jason Lutes’ Berlin is a huge and it's a huge endeavor. It's a huge book. It's very, very large. I have a copy on my shelf very close by and I love this. Not only because as usual, I'm going to tell you I lived in Berlin, yada, yada, but this is about the fall of the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens. It is a look at Berlin that is done in very sophisticated, graphic artwork that looks at once almost art deco, but also almost completely contemporary. And you can tell from what I said about Thi Bui's book, as well as Berlin that that appeals to me when the artwork helps bring you in a graphic novel to connect with a place far in the past or far outside of your own experience. So, love Berlin.
Daniel Clowes, again, another one, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing correctly, but he is incredible. An incredible graphic novel writer whose Patience came out in, uh, Monica came out just this past year. But I'm particularly fond of Patience, which came out about eight years ago. And it's a psychedelic science fiction love story. Okay, I don't know what else to tell you about it except to say, go and read whatever you can find by Daniel Clowes because he truly is taking graphic novels to a different level.
Now, when it comes to graphic novels, that have been adapted, and there's tons of them. The Umbrella Academy might be one of the better known. There are others, of course. But this one is really dear to me, not only because I loved the adaptation and loved its cast, including Elliot Page. It's by Gerard Way, who, believe it or not, is the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. So, very cool, multi talented graphic novel writer there. And I want to say The Umbrella Academy, if you don't know anything about it, is dealing with the most unusual group of students and most unusual tasks. You want it. You want The Umbrella Academy. So there we go. How did I do?
JA: All right, let's take a look. And we're at, we're at five minutes and 42 seconds.
BP: Oh, no good for me today. I failed Six Recs, but maybe I'll do a little bit better on the next one. So thank you all and see you next time.
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