Podcasts about unmarriageable

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Soniah Kamal is an award winning novelist, essayist and public speaker. Her latest novel, Unmarriageable, is a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice set in contemporary Pakistan. 

Hello friends,Today we bring a new podcast episode and conversation that I think you will love. It's with Damianne Scott, an educator, writer and speaker in the Jane Austen community - she teaches literature at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College and Cincinnati State University. And she's the host of the Facebook page, Black Girl Loves Jane. She's also working on a very intriguing project right now - rewriting the story of Jane Austen's Persuasion into the setting of an African-American megachurch. In her own book project, Persuaded, due out from Meryton Press next year, Ms. Scott makes Anne Elliot a PK - or preacher's kid. And as Dr. Cornell West has pointed out, in a legendary talk at the JASNA Annual General Meeting of 2012, Jane Austen was also a PK, or preacher's kid. This is a world that Damianne Scott knows well, and it's a world I also am not unfamiliar with - I also, as it happens, am a PK - so I really enjoyed this conversation. Ms. Scott says that as a student of 19th century literature, which she has loved since middle school, she often has found herself the only Black student in the room. So she appreciates the nontraditional casting of shows like Bridgerton, but has also watched and addressed the backlash that has arisen from that production and from the PBS series Sanditon.An article Damianne Scott contributed to JASNA.org, or the Jane Austen Society of North America online, addressed the pineapple controversy surrounding the Sanditon series. A chorus of viewers felt that using the pineapple emoji as a fan symbol for the show was insensitive to the cultural weight and the connotations of colonialism and of the slave trade carried by that symbol. Damianne Scott weighed in, and she weighs in here, in this conversation, saying she hopes people and the community of Austen lovers and fans will continue to grow and understand that - as she says - Austen doesn't want to be put up on a pedestal: Jane Austen, she says, wants to be among the people. I love that.Press play here (above) to stream this from any device, or find the Austen Connection podcast on Spotify or Apple. Enjoy!And for you word lovers, here's an excerpt from our conversation:Plain JaneLet me talk a little bit first about Persuasion. So why do you love the story of Persuasion?Damianne ScottWell, I love the story of Persuasion … It was my first Jane Austen novel that I read in college. And the first one I did a paper on. So that was one reason why I loved it. Second, I do enjoy the movie, the one that [from 1995], with Ciarán Hinds, the BBC, is one of my favorite adaptations. And then I like it now. Because Anne Elliot is very adaptable for any woman today, who is over a certain age who is not married, who has no children, and who has come to bear the responsibility  - either willingly or unwillingly - to be the caregiver of their parents, and their finances, the dependable child in the household. And I find that very relatable to me, because I am not married, have no children, and have become the pseudo-caregiver [and] financial-responsibility person, in my family. So it speaks to me. The other thing is, I think that Persuasion in itself, again, is very adaptable to what I'm doing now with my rewriting of it and modernizing it. Anne - she's always criticized by her father for the way she looks. There's that famous scene where, you know, she's talking, and he's like, “Oh, your skin looks better today, you changed cold creams”! And he talks about the naval officers, and he talks about Admiral Croft and how, you know, he looks pretty well for somebody who was in the Navy!Plain Jane  And it's very funny, like, it's a source of humor, but also it's just, you feel Anne's pain. I mean, any woman in the world feels Anne's pain with all of this. We're also laughing at it.Damianne Scott Because he's totally ridiculous! Like, really. So it is very funny. And so my adaptation- it's a little focused on physicality. So my Anne does not necessarily have a skin issue, but she has a weight issue. And then, because she's in this community, a small community - well, not a small community, but anyone who knows about African-American megachurches, which is where my book takes place ... people can still pretty much know your business, because it's a small community.Plain Jane So let me - I have to ask you more about this: I want you to talk about this retelling, but I will just say, I grew up going to Black churches. And I grew up going to megachurches. But never a Black megachurch.Damianne Scott Well, there actually are not that many.Plain Jane Well, I grew up in a sort of evangelical background. So I didn't love the megachurches … So can we just pause for a second and you tell me: Why that setting? Why the Black megachurch?Damianne Scott Well, because I'm familiar with it. It is, you know, my world. I go to church now. And so, though my church was not a megachurch, in the terms of how we think of it, when I was growing up, it had about 500 members. And at that time, so those were like mid-'80s, that was a big number of people. And then my pastor, he was the head bishop of the state of Ohio, for our denomination. So I'm very used to that church, where everybody knows your business. And you know what it means to be a preacher's kid, so I wasn't a preacher's kid. But I know what it means to be a preacher's kid and deacon's kid, someone-of-authority's kid, everybody talking about what's going on and everybody else. It is a village mentality. Plain JaneYeah, that's so true. And it is like a village. You were starting to say everybody knows each other's business. It's like the “four and twenty country families.” But I love what you're sayingd: there's a hierarchy, it can be a very wonderful, close community. It can also be a fairly oppressive community. And nobody shows this better than Jane Austen, right? I just have to say, Dami, so you were going to megachurches in the ‘80s; I remember going to the megachurches in the ‘80s. And this was in Atlanta. I would not have stepped foot in there without, like, [full] makeup, hair …!Damianne ScottOh yeah. Plain JaneSo, whole thing. And I kind of resented that, you know? So what was your experience? What  has been your experience in the church?Damianne ScottSo … I think I am not critiquing the church as a whole, pastors as a whole, as [much as] this particular pastor. But yeah … I came from a denomination for a long time [where] you didn't wear makeup, so that wasn't a problem. But you know, we were dressed, you didn't go to church and pants … you put together your hair, no jeans, there was no such thing as wearing jeans to church, on a Sunday morning. … if you're a woman, you wear a skirt. … I didn't resent it, because that's all I knew. I didn't feel oppressed by it. Especially when I was young. My friends were there, my family was there. That's where I participated in things, where I cultivated my speaking abilities or my writing abilities. So it didn't find it oppressive, to me, growing up at all. And then as I grew up, something altered and changed. I did start seeing things a little different, because then I realized, you know, church is also business. And so sometimes, it's all business, just like with all denominations … preaching one thing and doing the other. And so there is a little greed aspect to some churches - not all, of course. So … with this hierarchy, there is a power trip … Because of how the system was set up in America, systematically, the racism, the church was the only place where Black people could have clout. So if you are a pastor, or deacon, if you're a missionary, you have power. You have clout. What you say, goes. And so if you are the child of a pastor, a bishop, or whatever, people are looking at you. They expect you to act a certain way, be a certain way, do things a certain way, because you are not only reflective of Christ … but you're also reflected on that power structure. If you do something, you are challenging that power structure, that whole thing might fall down. And so Sir Walter, my character, he is a pastor of a megachurch. But he also has some gambling issues, and some spending habit issues. And he puts his church into debt, where he's almost losing the church and the upper limits of his power and his clout in the community. And then he has these children and one of them … is fiscally responsible and capable and efficient and knows how to run things. He doesn't see her value because she doesn't represent what he thinks a daughter should look like. Physically. … She's someone with intelligence. She's kind of challenging his wisdom … his thought process. And so that makes it really Austen. Even though it's 2021.Plain Jane That's so great. Everything you're describing is this character - that's so Austen, a character, a strong woman, a smart woman who's undermined and undervalued, and just how frustrating that can be. But Jane Austen just shows people how to go forward. So that's kind of what appeals to you about the story of Persuasion? You mentioned a teacher encouraged you, in your Facebook Live [event]. You called it an adult fairy tale, in a way because she does persevere, doesn't she? And is gracious. How does she get by? How does she survive? And why is this an adult fairy tale?Damianne Scott Well, I guess the fairy tale part is because there is no, necessarily, fairy godmother, or magic  - just that Anne kind of realizes that what she wants is important and valued. That she should move on. I mean, the only reason why she doesn't marry Wentworth in the first place is because Lady Russell and her family, and the small community that she's involved in, is like, “No, he has no money. He doesn't represent what we represent, being gentry … You can't marry him, he has no money.”And of course, during that time, having money was the most important thing - you're not marrying somebody necessarily for love, you're marrying somebody for connections, growing the family, making sure you're not starving, especially if you're a woman. So all your sisters are not starving. So this is what you're getting married for, you're marrying for the benefit of society, and particularly your small society. And so what Anne does is realize at the end: “Bump that! Now I'm wanting to do what I want to do, where my voice is heard, and I'm gonna marry this man that I love, that I probably [should have]  married eight years ago, but I listened to y'all.”And so I think the magic is that she realizes her own worth. And that there was somebody who already recognized it and she kind of let it slip away. And she gets a second chance to rectify it, which is something most of us do not get - that second chance to rectify a decision that we made incorrectly. And I think that's why it's a fairy tale.Plain Jane All right! … Do you find yourself having to explain to people about why you love Jane Austen, that it is about hardship? It is about endurance and survival? It's not just about finding somebody to, you know, to marry and carry you off. That it is about what it is like to get through life with responsibility, and how to do it graciously, and how to, hopefully, how to find happiness?Damianne Scott … My friends, they just don't understand that at all. They think of Austen as, you know: the dresses, the balls, the bonnets. And it is, let's not get it twisted: It's part of it. That is the appeal for people who read it today or look at the movies today. It's the romance. Because I mean … all the major novels that she wrote, all the main characters get her man, they get married. We may not see the marriage, but we know they get married. So for some people, that is the appeal of Austen, that is what they look at for Austen. That's why they read Austen and that's all they want. And that's fine. Others, like myself, I'm interested in also the other themes that are going on, the nuances. Because the nuances of the dance, [for instance]: Well, why are they doing that particular dance? Why can't women inherit from their fathers? Why [is it] they cannot work? What was going around in England at that time, to make it the way it is? That is what interests me also. And so, in the community itself … my biggest push is just trying to get them to understand not only the historical, which many of them already do, because that's why they're Janeites, and they really dive in and they're really scholarly about it, where I'm not as scholarly about a lot of the issues. But my biggest question is just to see that it's text, it's ideas that are open to all people. And... that it can be open to other people who might not necessarily have been in the thought of, or the mind of, Austen when she wrote those novels.Plain JaneWell I love that. And I want to hear more about that, Dami. So you started the Facebook page Black Girl Loves Jane to basically do what? To kind of put a stamp on that?Damianne Scott Yeah, well it initially started as something really for me to do, where I could share Jane Austen's quotes and wits and books and all that. That was in August of 2018. So it's pretty new. Just something to, like, put a quote of the day or a photo of the week. And then I would share something that was happening in my life that that wisdom either expresses or answers for. And then my goal was to then have other people share their experience that is similar to the quote that I placed out there today. And I call it Black Girl Loves Jane because I'm a Black girl! So I was a Black girl who loves Jane, which is an oddity! It's not completely, like, not heard of - you know, I've met and seen other women of color who love Jane. But for my circle, I am the odd man out and in college, here I am trying to get my master's degree in English, and I am the only African American who's in a Victorian class or British Romantic class, you know, trying to read Shelley and Austen and talk about these things. And I'm the only one there. And so what Anne does, is realize at the end: “Bump that! Now I'm wanting to do what I want to do, where my voice is heard, and I'm gonna marry this man that I love, that I probably [should have]  married eight years ago, but I listened to y'all.”So that's how it started. And I just like classics in general. So it's not just Austen. I love Hardy. I was presented to Hardy when I was 14 in school. So Hardy was who I started off with, because my teacher did not believe that I would like Austen. Because he was like, “Oh, you like Hardy? You're not going to like Austen because Austen is happy and they get married.”  … We never could read anything modern. So every book we read in high school from ninth to 12th grade when we had to do a book report was a classic. You know, everything else was Hardy, or Eliot, or Dickens, or Austen. So I was like, “Okay, this is a world I'm not used to. I've never been introduced to these classics before. So here we go.”My first book I read was Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Like, “This is what's happening in England in the early 1900s?! Okay! My goodness!” I read Hardy, and then [continued in] high school, college. And then it has eventually over time has evolved to just trying to make the case, in whatever small way I can, that Austen is not just for Caucasian people, that Austen is not just for people from Britain, that there are other cultures that can benefit from the lessons of Austen, or from other classic literature as well. Because anything I deem to be classic is something that is relatable to everyone, if you're willing to do the teaching to make it relatable. I think part of the issue, especially in high schools today, and maybe in some colleges … is that we teach these books, particularly these books that are in the canon, as unrelatable to anyone who's not white, or young … or whatever, and we tell you, “You're never going to understand it.” And really what it is, is the teachers are going to have to figure out a way to make it relatable and teachable for whatever generation they are presented with. And so part of my reason for writing my version Persuaded, part of my reason for why I read other modernization versions of Austen's novels and other classic novels, is because I have this hope. I want to have this hope that it's reachable even to this generation, and that if we don't learn how to make it reachable to the next generation, they're going to die. These classics are not going to be classics anymore. They're not going to want to teach Austen, or Dickens, or Toni Morrison. They're not going to want to teach them anymore because they won't feel they are relevant today. And so, books like, hopefully books like mine, but also Pride by Ibi Zoboi is giving that attention, making that way. And also Unmarriageable [by Soniah Kamal] which I just read too, is making that way, that it is so relatable! These are my people! Even if it is, you know, 1789 when it's written, and I'm reading it in 2021. These are my people. This is what's going on in my life in my world, too. And she's speaking to me. And so that is what my goal is.Plain JaneAwesome! Listeners can't hear that I'm snapping at Dami. I love it. It just makes Austen so much richer, when people realize [that], like I feel like they have already with Shakespeare. So I think you're - hopefully, you're right, and I am too, because I have the same hope -  that it's just a matter of imagination. It's just a matter of changing the way we see it, changing the way we teach it.Damianne ScottI always try to - even with my students,  because I teach English Composition, but I have taught upper-level classes as well about literature - and I'm always trying to get my students to understand that period just means it happened at a certain period of time. And the themes and experiences that we are having are the same themes and experiences that they'll be having 75 years from now, and the way that they were having 75 years ago, if you get through all that superficial stuff, right? Yes, you might have to practice some of the language because Shakespeare is no easy man, by any means! But the themes, the lessons, really what he was saying is just as modern today as anything else.Plain JaneLet me ask you, Dami, what would you like to see in any kind of Persuasion adaptation? What do you think makes it work for today? Because there are also two films coming out.Damianne Scott There is, and one I'm really excited about because one is going to be a color blind or nontraditional Persuasion, what they're calling nontraditional casting, where the Wentworth character is going to be played by a person of color.Plain Jane Oh, is it Cosmo Jarvis? Yes. Okay.Damianne ScottYes. So he's, going to be playing Wentworth. And then Mr. Golding, Henry Golding, who I adore, he is playing Mr. Elliot. Cousin Elliot, I guess. … So, it's nontraditional casting. And so that's what I was excited about, that we had that happening in the era of course of Bridgerton, which I also loved. But [it] also got a lot of flack. And those who are Jane Austen fanatics did not appreciate Bridgerton, some have not appreciated casting for this new Persuasion. And it's because of the nontraditional casting. So for the past six months or so, I've been doing some talks and things like that. I did one for “Race and the Regency” for Jane Austen & Co., where I'm pushing this idea: “Why not? Black people were there. Why are we acting like Black people are not there? There are people of color there, there are people from South Asia, India, were there during that time.” So I don't understand why people get upset about this notion … as if Austen was this historical document that could not be altered. It's fiction! It's fiction! Everything in it is fiction. I guess in England during that time, there is the wars going on at the time. All that has happened. I know this is happening, but again, it's still a fictionalized world, some of the cities don't even exist, really, in England. And these are fictionalized stories. And so the hullabaloo about Bridgerton, particularly, it's the greatest thing right now, is somewhat disconcerting to me. Which is why I make Black Girl Loves Jane, because I just don't understand it. That icing out of cultures who are sometimes forced to read Austen, but they can't be in Austen? They can't be in an Austen film, but you're gonna make them read it as part of the literary canon that you have in school, but then they can't be in it? Doesn't make sense to me. [P]art of my reason for why I read other modernization versions of Austen's novels and other classic novels, is because I have this hope: I want to have this hope that it's reachable even to this generation.So I'm really excited about that. And I'm looking for not only for Persuasion to do it, but I'm looking forward to a time where it's not a big deal. So that is what I'm looking forward to, not only with Persuasion, but all novels and really, you know, all classic novels. Where it's just not a big deal. And I don't always go into it, you know, by any means, looking at any kind of film or book. I'm like, ‘Oh, there's no Black people in it. So I'm not gonna read it, or people of color.' That's not me at all. But I do when I'm looking at it. And as I get more past the the surface stuff, but to the actual discussions about modernization and race and class, there's discussions to be had: … “What is wrong with this scene? Or, what's wrong with this theme that is being carried out through this period? Why was it established? What's wrong with it? And how have we rectified it? Or have we rectified it in 21st century England or America? Are there still class systems that's going on? Are they still based on race? Are they still based on it?” I am just saying that, like you said, the new normal has to come about where it's not such a big deal. I don't know if you know that I published an article in JASNA. Plain Jane Thank you for  reminding me - Yes, I did.Damianne Scott Well, one of the things I mentioned is, and that's part of the problem, I said, is that there is this need to hold on very tightly -  for many British citizens, but it's the same here in America as well - to this history that is not accurate. So this why people get upset with Bridgerton, or nontraditional casting in some Dickens movies, is because they're holding on to this idea of what they believe they are. And even though their history was told to them incorrectly … the challenge of it that's coming about in these last few years, it's very disconcerting for people. So this is why people have a cow. When you're going to have a multiethnic person play Wentworth, this is why people are upset that you have as the high royal in a drama going on in 1830 Regency be a Black queen. This is why people had a cow when the Jane Austen museum said, “Oh, we're going to establish and talk about how Jane lived during this time slavery,” and people have a cow about it.It's because it is challenging an idea and a history that is so ingrained in them, that, “Who will I be, if I am not the owner of Shakespeare or Austen or the Bible, or, for us in America, this great southern tradition? Who are we, if I don't have this? Or if you're telling me that I was wrong, or that my ancestors were wrong for what they did back then. And so therefore, you're now deeming me to be wrong.”And that is part of what solutions are going to have to come about. Because the change is coming. But how can we bring people along? Because it's scary to say to somebody, “Okay, you don't own Austen. I know you're Caucasian, I know you're a woman, and I know you might just want to tackle the stories of love and romance in these novels. But there's something else going on. Jane lived in a time of extreme upheaval. And if you say you love Austen, then you have to love all Austen. And some of what's was going on with Austen is not pretty.” Not necessarily with her, because she was a supporter of abolition, but what was going on around her was not pretty. And it's not all about the balls and the dresses, and that's scary for people. And so my hope is also that we can just have these dialogues where people don't feel like we're attacking or trying to take away something from them, but instead, understand and come to realize that we're trying to add to something that they already have.Plain Jane What would you like to see in our conversations going forward to be more equitable and inclusive? In our conversations about Jane Austen?Damianne Scott I guess what I really would like to see in the future is just this real, true understanding that people of color are not trying to - like what we've just discussed - invade people's space. What we're trying to do is say that we were always there. And that we want to be seen. And that we want to be accepted. Now, does that mean you have to go back and change 250 years of history? Well, no. You can never change that slavery, you can never change that there was a feudal system, and there were the landed gentry - you can't change it. But the idea that we are … this exclusive club, that is a problem. Because the change is coming. But how can we bring people along? Because it's scary to say to somebody, “Okay, you don't own Austen. I know you're Caucasian, I know you're a woman, and I know you might just want to tackle the stories of love and romance in these novels. But there's something else going on. Jane lived in a time of extreme upheaval. And if you say you love Austen, then you have to love all Austen.”So, hopefully, the future is that when we have these discussions, and have these conferences and have these things, that we are interested in the needle-point, and the dancing, and the foods that Austen ate; but we're also interested in the history of what was going on with the slave trade that was happening at that time. And we're also interested in how they were treating women. And we're also interested in talking about what they were doing with the tea that they were taking from India. And then we're also interested in, in all these other maybe somewhat earthy discussions about Austen and that are just as prevalently produced and advertised and populated and attended, as the latest discussion about how to make a bonnet. I am for you learning how to make a bonnet. I want to learn how to make a bonnet too. But I also want you to know that often, we put Austen on a pedestal. Austen does not want to be on the pedestal. We put her on there. And we make her so unreachable: She can only be talking about “this,” she can only be presented “this way.” As long as we keep Austen on that pedestal. she's going to die. Her words, her wisdom, is going to die. Because the one thing my generation - Generation X, Y or millennial - we're not looking for people to put on pedestals. We want people who want to be among the people. And Austen is among the people if you let her be. -------Thank you for being here, friends. Please talk back to us - let us know your thoughts on what Damianne Scott says here about how we read, and teach, and talk about Austen, and how we can make Austen more relatable. Teachers and professors, how do you introduce Jane Austen's stories to your classes today? Do you find that it's helpful to, as Damianne Scott says, consciously think about how to engage young, diverse readers with the classics and to help them see, as she says so beautifully, that Austen is speaking to all of us? And is among us? Let us know! It would be fascinating to continue this discussion! You can comment, here:Meanwhile, watch for more conversations coming up, including new podcast conversations with Ayesha at Last author Uzma Jalaluddin, Island Queen author Vanessa Riley, and Harvard professor and long-time New Yorker writer Louis Menand on “How to Misread Jane Austen.”  Thanks to you for listening, engaging, and making this the wonderful community and conversation that is growing and thriving. Invite a book-loving friend to join us! Have a wonderful week. You can stay in touch with us on Twitter at @AustenConnect, on Facebook and Instagram at @austenconnection, or you can simply reply/comment here. Stay well and stay in touch,Yours affectionately,Plain Jane Cool linksHere's Damianne Scott's piece for JASNA.org on PBS's Sanditon series and the pineapple controversy: https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-41-no-2/scott/Here's our piece on Damianne Scott and BGLJ Facebook page in the Christian Science Monitor: https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2021/0917/Is-Persuasion-the-Jane-Austen-story-we-all-need-right-nowMeryton Press - where Damianne Scott's retelling Persuaded is due for release next year: https://merytonpress.com/More on the upcoming Persuasion film adaptation, starring Cosmo Jarvis, Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding: https://deadline.com/2021/05/dakota-johnson-netflix-henry-golding-persuasion-cosmo-jarvis-suki-waterhouse-richard-e-grant-nikki-amuka-bird-1234754639/*This post was updated to reflect that Damianne Scott also teaches at Cincinnati State University. Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we are in conversation with Soniah Kamal, a Pakistani-American writer who is the author of two novels: An Isolated Incident and Unmarriageable. We talk about Jane Austen's classic, the South Asian culture, and the many parallels between the book and real-life, writing life, and much more! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/browngirlsread/message

Our episode today is full of laughs! We discuss our favorite and not-so-favorite characters from #SoniahKamal's retelling of #PrideAndPrejudice, called #Unmarriageable. This Pakistani spin on the #JaneAusten classic is hilarious, witty, and thought-provoking at the same time. Listen now to hear us discuss the many parallels between this book and the South Asian culture: weird universal truths, societal expectations, parental excuses, the fixation of the culture with marriage, and much more! www.browngirlsread.com - instagram.com/browngirlsreadpod - twitter.com/browngirlsread1 - linktr.ee/browngirlsread --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/browngirlsread/message

Soniah Kamal is an award winning novelist, essayist and public speaker. Her most recent novel, Unmarriageable: Pride & Prejudice in Pakistan, is a Financial Times Readers' Best Book of 2019. Her debut novel, An Isolated Incident, was a finalist for the Townsend Award for Fiction and the KLF French Fiction Prize. Soniah's TEDx talk is about second chances and ‘We are the Ink', her address at a U.S. Citizenship Oath Ceremony, talks about immigrants and the real American Dreams. Soniah's work has appeared in critically acclaimed anthologies and publications including @nytimes, @Guardian, @TheAtlantic, @Buzzfeed and more. Soniah grew up in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and England and resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Get to know her with #11Questions! Follow on social media: www.instagram.com/11questionspod | www.twitter.com/11questionspod | www.linktr.ee/11questions HELLO FRESH Link: https://hellofresh-ca.o5kg.net/c/2544961/791027/7893 | Code: HFAFF80 | Offer: $80 Discount ($50 - $20 - $10) Including Free Shipping on First Box!

Professor Danielle Christmas is a scholar in English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her day-job, she researches serious topics about race and history, from white nationalism to the legacy of slavery and the Holocaust, and how issues like this are depicted in our cultural currency. But when she's off the clock and needs to unplug, Danielle Christmas turns to Jane Austen. And she says even though she doesn't always want to, she can't help bringing her knowledge of race and history into these stories. As co-editor of the most recent issue of the JASNA journal Persuasions Online, Danielle Christmas has become a convener of conversations within the Janeite and academic community on race and the works of Jane Austen. She took some time recently to chat with us about that issue, and everything from Fanny Price and the history behind Mansfield Park, to binging “Bridgerton.” And she says, for her, escaping to a Regency world can be both guilt-free and fruitful. Here's our conversation.Danielle ChristmasSometimes I really like the idea of putting my brain to the use of just having fun - of playing around in a text that's beautifully written and is doing subtle work, right? [During the day] I'm talking about slavery and the Holocaust. And my new work is on white nationalism. That's loud, there's nothing [subtle] about that. And you have to pay attention to the corners and the contours of what's happening in [Jane Austen's] novels, in order to really understand the stakes. And it's just a good brain exercise [and] it trains me to pay attention to the small things. Whereas maybe if I'm spending all of my time, just looking at the loud - you know, the loudness, the violence, all of that - I miss the corners.Plain Jane  Well tell me, Danielle, because you are reading with all of that loudness around you. And you're very aware of this and you're … choosing to dedicate the time to exploring all those issues in our culture, everything from our lynching histories in our culture and the legacy of slavery and the legacy of racism. What do you bring as a reader with your expertise to Jane Austen, does that enter into it very much? Do you find comfort in the fact that she was surrounded by these conversations? And they are, like you say subtle, but they might be there like Edward Said says, - look at what's not there as well as what is there.Danielle Christmas Yes, exactly! That it's always there. Even if it's not there. It's there and it's absence and the fact that it's absent, is itself indicating something that we should be thinking about that's doing something whether or not it's present in the room. I think it's fascinating that people that we talk to so much in this special issue that we're doing [in] Persuasions, there is a lot going on, of course about the triangle trade and how that works. And yet there are four lines in Mansfield Park … or the sum total of what Jane Austen clearly said, explicitly said - explicitly-ish! - that is her making a direct reference to slavery. If we, we smart people, we smarty-pants people, have so much to say, based on four lines and its absence, then there really is something fascinating going on. Anytime there is a narrative, a television series, a book, anything that has to do, it is deeply embedded in a construction of class culture, right? And manners. There are all sorts of politics that surround that. And she was right. … She was a brilliant woman and a brilliant writer who wrote knowing that, right? It's intentional. I think that sometimes it's fascinating to encounter resistance among people who love Jane Austen, out of fear, I think, that we're pushing politics into a space where it's like a protected space. So why are we bringing politics into yet another thing, right? Like, why are we? It's there! … If we were living in Regency times, there's no way to read her work without understanding it as construction of political narrative. Not only that, or maybe not primarily that, but to write a romance novel at the time is itself a political exercise. And so acknowledging the truth of that - two things can be true at the same time. This is what I like, my major discovery in my 30s: Things can be true, a person can be, you know, racist and fascinating; a person could be writing just enjoyable romantic fiction, and also be doing something interesting and political. And I think that's what's happening. And it's easy to to get our hackles up on either side of that, to insist that it is only politics. And to forget that it's more fascinating. So why are we bringing politics into yet another thing, right? Like, why are we? It's there! … If we were living in Regency times, there's no way to read her work without understanding it as construction of political narrative. I think maybe this is my pop culture brain. But it's more fascinating because it's not just politics, right? Like she's doing something that is supposed to be an exercise in entertainment and pleasure. But she's playing this all out. And in a tableau that's tends to be people of a certain like wealth and class and that money comes from someplace, their comfort comes from someplace, the exclusion or not, of people. You cannot read Mansfield Park outside of those four lines, without understanding Fanny, and her absence of wealth, her relationship to the wealthier family, and the way that that interaction works as anything except a political inquiry into how relationships with family and money work and power, and morals and ethics, right? Plain Jane  So everything you say, Danielle, so interesting about Mansfield Park: They have to get their money at Mansfield Park from somewhere. You mentioned the four lines about “dead silence.” There's so much in that novel, if you're closely reading the text, that are choices that Jane Austen is making. And … she's so good at her job that we forget that there's a puppeteer. There's a conductor, who's making choices about how Mansfield Park gets its money, about where Sir Thomas goes when he leaves Mansfield Park, about what Fanny Price is reading. So much more than the “dead silence,” you know?So tell me more. Danielle, when I read it, it occurred to me that it's not it doesn't seem to me like too much of a stretch to see Mansfield Park and its dismantling, I would say it's kind of reduced to rubble. By the end of it. It's kind of destroyed! And the only person who's still standing is Fanny Price. And I feel like it could be a metaphor for a sort of dismantling of England through colonialism - morally - not paying attention to your house, being out there and not concentrating on what's real and what's actually ethical. And the consequences of that. Do you think that's too much of a stretch?Danielle Christmas That's provocative! I kind of love that! I would have to sit and think about that. I think if that's plausible, and as a sort of larger metaphor, I think that maybe … you'll get my preemptive defenses against those people who tend to in general, tell me I'm bringing politics into politics-free spaces. So [they'll say], “It's just romance. Right? It's happy. It's just pop culture. Why are you insisting?” I think because of that, I tend to be more conservative in the claims that I make than you're being. I think that my the most conservative account that I could easily defend - that I think that any person could reasonably defend: After you learn a little bit about Jane Austen's family in general (I resist psychoanalytic readings of an author through their work, don't think it's helpful), but you can't find out that her father has a trustee relationship with a plantation, or find out that her brother would patrol waters for slave ships, and not think about how knowing that in her relationship to them, and doing that would inform her decision to write this novel. And what to include, and not. So I think the most conservative thing to say about slavery, history, [and] politics, and the novel, is that just the insistence that she's publishing this, and that she's insisting that people who like her novels, and enjoy her kind of writing, read this. That is disruption. That is interesting. Just that, yes. So, just even stopping there, makes me curious. I think sometimes I feel like my job as a teacher, maybe less so in my writing, but as a teacher, is just to make us notice things that we noticed, but didn't realize were important to notice. Like to just say if I was teaching a class, like, what do you guys think that a woman who was writing what we could call - even at the time -chicklit, right? Like a woman who's writing - yes, a smart woman - who's writing for other literate smart women, inasmuch as any woman is considered especially smart and literate at the time, who's interested in reading a romantic novel happened to do this. Like happens to mediate this particular story through the experience of a deep privilege? And, what you're saying, which is really the kind of collapse of privilege in one family, right? So, like, and this is where we're going. Just think about that, guys. I'm a new historicist. So I want to know what's going on all around the page. I want to know what helped make the story and I want to know what the story is doing off of the page. And so there is an entire ecosystem around what we can talk about - this really weird thing she did, right? Like, it's just a weird thing! There's a way to have told that story, so that all I needed to do was curl up on my couch and read it and not really have to do any heavy lifting. Not grapple with what it means that there are four lines of silence. I think sometimes I feel like my job as a teacher, maybe less so in my writing, but as a teacher, is just to make us notice things that we noticed, but didn't realize were important to notice. You know, Fanny really is the subject of abuse. … And I think because so many of us read the novel, and so many of us who are doing it outside of the context of the classroom, are doing it for pleasure reading. And ... if I'm reading this novel for pleasure, I don't want to sit with Fanny's pain very long. It is unpleasant. It's really cruel the way she's treated. But if we pause and think about that, that is quite a choice that Jane Austen made: to insist that somebody who wants to pick up the genre that they would expect her to be writing, that they have to walk through that maltreatment. And it's not just, you know, a heroine who's mistreated. She is the subject of abuse. Compared to how people feel about Lizzy Bennet, you know, everyone wants to be Lizzy Bennet, right?Fanny is meek. She is not … as charming. And, you know, she's just coming from a different place. What a heroine she is, right? What a curious heroine she is compared to who we've come to know from Jane Austen's other novels. What do we do with that? What do we make of that? Sometimes I think the most fruitful things come from just realizing that there are questions that we haven't been asking.Plain JaneLet me get to some of your work. Danielle. You are the Co-editor of the most recent issue of Persuasions … and it's a peer-reviewed publication of JASNA, the Jane Austen Society of North America. And it features essays on Jane Austen and her world. Can you tell me a little bit about the most current issue, which is called “Beyond the Bit of Ivory, Jane Austen and Diversity”? By the way, I put the Call for Papers, link in our chat. It's so beautiful, the first paragraph of that. Danielle Christmas I'm so glad that you think it's beautifully written. You know, it was fascinating. We encountered each other through the “Race and the Regency” series. That was a fascinating multi-month journey ... hearing different lectures. But .. because so many of us are asking questions about race, we're asking questions we didn't know we should have been asking .... So that's good and important work then, right? If you sit back and think, OK, we're all kind of engaged in that thinking JASNA has jumped in. Like at Chawton [House], where they were doing the Black Lives Matter to Jane Austen exhibit and all of that. I mean, like, Whoa. Fascinating. Like, who is mad who's yelling? Why? What are the stakes to people? What's happening? … Like, what is that alarmism about? People who have different intellectual stakes in the way that we remember, and read Jane Austen. We're all bringing a different set of thoughts and values and questions to this figure, as an abstract person, as a writer, as a creator of stories. We are mapping on to these stories, all sorts of powers that they may or may not have. So this special issue is an opportunity for us, in this moment, to do some deep thinking about those questions. Fanny is meek. … What a curious heroine she is compared to who we've come to know from Jane Austen's other novels. What do we do with that? What do we make of that? Sometimes I think the most fruitful things come from just realizing that there are questions that we haven't been asking.You know, there are plenty of folks who have been working on the intersection of these questions in these histories and Jane Austen's work for a long time. So it's not as if, you know, finally scholars are coming to ask questions. But for maybe different scholars than before, and some who have been … in this wheelhouse, but different folks who maybe haven't been a part of the conversation yet. And all of us, right, whether or not we've been a part of the conversation, or we're new to it, or having this conversation right now. And now is a different time to be having this conversation. Asking questions about Race in the Regency four years ago is interesting and important. But it's different right now. There is something different happening in the … stakes of the way that we think and argue and remember racial history.Plain Jane  The very first sentence in the Call for Papers [says] “the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, and the pandemic that has disproportionately killed along racial lines have shocked the world into a confrontation of inequities resulting from individual behavior, institutional design, and even attachment to limited and comfortable perspectives.” That's really powerful language to introduce a Call for Papers about Jane Austen and the world of Jane Austen. What did you mean in that first sentence - “limited and comfortable perspectives that we might be attached to”?Danielle Christmas Well, what it makes me think now about is the fact that I think a lot of us, if you read that Call for Papers and agree, like, Wow, that's an important conversation to be having. Then it's likely that at least a little bit, when we read Jane Austen or - heaven forbid - we like go binge a Netflix series, right? So … Why should we be wasting hours doing this, it's purely an exercise in like, you know, self pleasure, whatever?Plain Jane  Well, let's just say what we're all thinking right now, which is: “Bridgerton.” So yes, as we're watching “Bridgerton” …?Danielle Christmas Right?! As we all sit for one day and watch the entirety of the series! We, I don't know, I won't project for lots of others, but I've talked to enough people who are the same people who would read that Call for Papers and think, “This is urgent and important.” And then would would realize that there is some degree of guilt that we feel when we are cozied up right now reading Jane Austen. Like … what does it mean? That we're exercising our comfortable privilege to sit and relax and read a feel-good book, you know? I feel guilt about that. I feel guilt as a person, as a scholar who has a certain set of values. But as a Black woman who understands all of the history that's in the background of Jane Austen, I sit with some guilt about what is and is not there. I think that it's really helpful to see that, and talk about that, and not suggest that, like, that guilt can't do fruitful things. In this Persuasions issue, there are some folks who are not, quote, “scholars,” right? These are not the usual suspects that you would find in a typical peer-reviewed journal. Lots of people submitted, and some of the folks that we're publishing are non-university folks. And … we are all bringing a set of active considerations that typically are dismissed as inappropriate for informing questions and answers, and we're insisting that that's OK. And it's interesting, and it can do interesting stuff. Some of the essays, unlike a sort of traditional peer-reviewed journal, are coming more from a place of practice. Some of them are coming more from a place of intellectual memoir. And ... that is so valuable, especially when we're thinking about what it means to talk about this figure in this time, considering that the passing description of her is a woman in the 1800s, who wrote romance novels, right? Like that's the quick and short version. There's a lot of problems we need to fix right now. And that's really an indulgence and there's something to be worked out. It feels like an exercise in privilege. And that's really [the source of] some of the resistance and alarmism, I think, is that we don't like what it might mean about us if we don't want to think about that. Who wants to think about that, right?! Like who wants to think, “Oh, yeah, there's the Zong crisis, is happening in the background, right? Maybe Lord Mansfield, the real man had something to do with the Mansfield Park.” Like what a terrible … who wants to think about that?!… But if you just read it  - to take away that you feel guilty, there's something wrong with you if you don't enthusiastically embrace the idea of talking about race, slavery and Jane Austen, right? Like you are intellectually dishonest, whatever. I think it's more interesting that, like, none of us really want to do that thinking! That she made it a little difficult to do that thinking. She could have been more explicit. But … an adult mind that's really fully formed and inclined to do critical thinking cannot read her novels and not ask questions about power, money, history, race. Like all of that stuff, the silences and the explicit statements: We have to notice it. We do or don't have to choose to ignore it. … It's not wrong, that on Tuesday, after doing my research on white nationalism, I don't really want to think about that.… I have a lot of students who are inclined to think that talking about this stuff means that a professor's telling them they should feel guilty about stuff. … They're conditioned to think that, like I'm saying you should have been thinking about this all along and shame on you. What I would say to them is, I think the most important thing about consuming any culture - so Jane Austen or any media - is to be deliberate and intentional …  If you sit down and decide to binge “Bridgerton” … I'm gonna have fun. It's Netflix. Like, it's been a tough day. But do that knowing that today, you're … choosing not to think about all of the racial politics that Shonda Rhimes introduced by creating this alternate race history in England. The fact that she … [introduced] the visual politics of having characters of having a Black man and a white woman fall in love -  in the context, just having interracial romance is itself a really political, challenging thing to represent. And to think about, especially now that I live in the south, to look at, to argue about, to remember to [think about] all of that. And Shonda Rhimes is like, “No, no, no. I'm not going to let you enjoy that without noticing what you're not noticing.”So I think it's just fine to decide, I don't really want to do that right now., I don't want to do that thinking. But tomorrow: Do that thinking, or know that it's thinking that needs to happen. And that you aren't appreciating the text for the fullness of what it is. ... You'll actually, I think, enjoy it more. Maybe you consider, like, what a decision she made, right? Like what a fascinating decision she made that we're arguing now, again, about Queen Charlotte and whether she was Black. And our construction of race -  it's fascinating to hear what people have to say about Queen Charlotte being Black, as if race operated in the same way then as it does now. All of that. Plain Jane  And in all of what you just said, something sticks out to me that I want to pick up - which is Jane Austen could have been more explicit. And I want to be careful that when I'm saying, “Fanny Price burns the b***h down!” You know, [that[ I'm not superimposing what I would have loved for Jane Austen to be thinking and saying. I do think, though, the more you hear the more you think, ‘“Yeah, there's that subtext. Maybe even not as subtle as I thought.”And you mentioned something in “Race and the Regency” and your talk on the Zong slave ship - [that] calling Mansfield Park Mansfield Park is a little bit like writing a novel today and calling it Scalia House. There's no way that's not saying something.So anyway, I think it's, it's not politics. It's life. If you think that we need to just sit and escape this, and your students want to just escape, and not look at this. It's not politics they're escaping from, it's basically life. It's just the real world that they're escaping from. But yet you need to escape from it. So do I and we all do that. So it's about life. And it is painful. That's the other thing you said, Yes, it's painful. You know, wherever you're coming from when you're reading Jane Austen. And when you're having these conversations about privilege, it's painful. But yet I feel like the art is what helps us work through it. So I guess that's what I pull away: the art. … But all of that noise, as you say. that loudness … was seeping in. So it's there. And it's just going to be unpacked and unraveled for generations to come.Danielle Christmas Absolutely. You know, and as I'm listening to us, and listening to you and thinking about what both of us are talking about, I think [of] another discomfort: This is really a sacred cow. So I'm spending time with Janeites. And talking about all this interesting stuff and enjoying books. And I think something that we don't like, this group that I've been spending time with ..., is that Jane Austen probably had some racial attitudes that we really wouldn't like. Right? So, really problematic racial attitudes and racial values. And that's hard, right? Like, if we, if we love her work, if we feel like she was doing important, disruptive, interesting stuff, that then challenges us. I think that brings forward ... the stuff that's, like, what does it mean about me? If I like a person, you know, I don't want to admit that about her because it means something about me. … What are my values if I enjoy that?And it is itself a kind of, like: Two things can be true, right? It can be true that she's doing interesting, disruptive, fascinating stuff. And she, I would put money down on her having racial attitudes that were not too awesome, right?I think the helpful thing to remember is we don't know, we'll never know, It's not really that interesting to argue about that. But that actually, I think, is the core of some of that alarmism, the unstated core of it. Which is like, “Are you trying to indict Jane Austen?” No, who can do that? What are we doing? It's so fascinating because I would say to a person who said that to me, like, I'm not gonna indict her, I don't have to! It is almost impossible to conceive of a world in which she would formulate her thoughts of how the world works, and how people work, and that she would think that I, a Black woman, am of equal intelligence.… She might - that'd be delightful! There's no way for me to know that! ...But, you know, I actually think it's not that interesting to acknowledge that she was a person. That's, just a person of her time. And so I want to - even among the people who it's fun to have these conversations with - disrupt the sacred, you know, really kill the sacred cow. … We must admit that this person whose work we love … we're being intellectually dishonest if we refuse that. And I actually think that's something that's really hard for us to do. There are still people who would read that Call for Papers who would share my values or do interesting work, but who will still be unsettled if I say to them, that according to today's values, and the way that we construct the idea of racism, Jane Austen was probably racist. That really makes people uncomfortable. Now, you know, it was my intellectual upbringing, like, how I was trained as a scholar, I was raised to be a little polemical. In some ways, I just kind of want to see what happens if I throw that out. ...If I go into a room and say, “What are you going to do with that? Here's the way that works” But outside of being kind of mischievous, I actually think that's probably true. And that's OK. Like, I don't think it means I shouldn't enjoy her work. I don't think it means anything about anyone who does enjoy her work. I think it means something about all of us. If we are so deeply resistant to a likelihood … I think that requires some interrogation. And that's work that even people who read that call for proposals, lots of those people who are open to different ways of thinking, so they are not themselves villainous. But like, they're not noticing what they're not noticing. Which is maybe their own resistance to the idea that, according to the way that we reasonably assign the label racism, [Jane Austen] is probably racist. What do we do with that? Plain Jane  Well, you're challenging me, Danielle. Because I did have a question on here: In what ways is reading Jane Austen and Jane Austen, you know, of her time, possibly problematic for us? But it was painful to even write that question. And I asked myself, Is that really necessary? And you're telling me, it is necessary. Again, it's another thing that's there or not there, to pull out and talk about, and just make sure, like you say, if, it's uncomfortable, why is it uncomfortable? And it's okay, by the way to be uncomfortable! Something we all need to know. But Danielle, basically, you can solve America, if we can all remember to keep two thoughts in our head. That's the first lesson. And then also just be OK with being uncomfortable. Just if we can all just do those two things. America, we'll be on our way.Danielle Christmas Yeah! To insist that you have some thinking to do does not make you a villain: It means you have some thinking to do. We all have different thinking to do. And then I might not have the same work to do. But I've got my own stuff. It's funny. … This is like when I say this to my graduate students, this is very much me projecting my judgment of myself. In retrospect, I used to call everything “problematic.” My first job out of college was as an organizer. I was a union organizer driving around Missouri - so driving around where you are! - organizing people. Low-income people in downstate Missouri, doing all sorts of, you know, life [challenges.] If I had the mission, my mission was to change the world. Plain Jane  That's a part of your bio I did not know! Danielle Christmas, ladies and gentlemen, driving around the byways, the blue highways of Missouri.Danielle Christmas It's an interesting state. It is an interesting state to be driving around as a 20-something Black woman there to organize low -income folks who are, you know, working their hardest. So that was a formative experience. But because of that quite reasonably, I had an eye for like, everything that is “problematic.” And yes, … and I'm not picking on you for using that word. It's a useful word.Plain Jane  Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I'm around students, and daughters, you know who, yes, find everything problematic.Danielle Christmas It's just, it's lazy. That's the thing to remember about myself, and what I noticed about my students. And the reason that I push them. It's not because they're calling something out that needs to be examined more closely. It's that it's lazy to call it “problematic” and stop right there. It's like, it is an empty explanation that explains nothing.Plain Jane  So you're right. It's kind of jargon and you do a great job of cutting through the jargon. Especially for an academic, right?.Danielle ChristmasSee, that's my dream!Plain JaneOne thing I have to ask along these lines is that you are spending a lot of time, you say, among Janeites. And you mentioned not everyone would love that Call for Proposals. I mean, what do you think, because these conversations are going on in a really dynamic, fantastic way with race and the Regency in the Jane Austen world. But there also people that would like to see - and they're coming out on Twitter and saying, openly and thoughtfully I think, that they would like to see things going faster. They'd like to see change. They'd like to see a more assertive discussion about diversity and equity. But what is your sense of the JASNA community and its take on equity and diversity and approaching all of these questions in the readings of Jane Austen and her world? Danielle Christmas You know, that is a terrific question. And it's a complicated question. I think that  what's good about this special issue is that, this [is] one corner of what needs to happen, which is intellectual work, that we expressed commitment to prioritizing that thinking. So that intellectual work and making that accessible. That is one corner. And that's one corner that I'm excited to participate in. The voices that are saying that that is not enough, are absolutely right. It would be dishonest of JASNA, were anyone just saying, and I don't think they would say, “You know, that's it, we're checking it off.” … So I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of, JASNA's ambition around this, right? … A part of that is the intellectual work, of making that accessible as a publication. But the other stuff the, like, let's revisit infrastructure. Let's ... look at our mission statement. And let's look at participation, the inclusion of other voices in the way the organization is run. All that absolutely needs to happen. And that work always takes longer, right? It's always messier. It's always more complicated. And I understand people saying, like, you know, “tick tock..” What I'm excited about is that this moment is giving us an opportunity to prioritize the discussions. I would actually say of myself that I am, I'm probably unfairly patient. I am predisposed, maybe because of like, the, ugliness that I work with. And my need to like my particular intellectual project or public-facing scholarship is to figure out how to do that, how to make these conversations. possible, not hostile, really interesting, and move at the pace that people can have those conversations, right?So, do I think we should all burn down the system to stop white nationalism? Sure. Is that going to happen? No. So that means that I've got to talk to a lot of people who really disagree with me ... So I have a sense of pace and scale … So I would not call myself the best measure of pace of change, right? Also, I think, because I have the good fortune of doing what I think is this really important part of the work. And that primarily being, I've joined the editorial board of Persuasions and I'm really excited about making sure that this isn't a single special-issue thing. That this conversation continues and expands, that we're not ghettoizing this work. So I know, that's a commitment they have. And I know those other conversations are happening. And I know there's frustration. There's a reason for optimism, because we're having a conversation. And the most important thing - and this does come from my days as a union organizer - is to cultivate allies where we can find them. So I know that there are people who are part of JASNA leadership, who are all about making this happen, even if we're different people in different corners … So make the make noise - because no change happens without noise. Plain Jane  Do you want to say any more about “Bridgerton?” I mean, I know that you saw it as an escape. Does it in any way advance the conversations, on all of these conversations on race and the Regency?Danielle Christmas I actually think it does really important work. Because there are arguments now about casting of Anne Boleyn in an upcoming film production that has her as a Black woman - a dark-skinned Black woman playing opposite a very … expected casting for Henry. There are dozens of future Jane Austen adaptations to come, because we love them, right? They're going to continue. They will be made as long as we watch them. At what point are .. we going to insist that we see that in those kinds of adaptations? I actually think that's really important. If someone told me, this raises the question of whether we're gonna cast Black women as leads in Jane Austen films … I actually think that's really interesting. I think so many of us like Jane Austen because we are Lizzy Bennet, right? We identify. We all want to be the people, we want to be leading ladyl. We're on the adventure, I would say even more so than lots of other works. And Jane Austen's awesome, because she makes that easy. And her stories make that easy. What does it mean for a new generation of viewer if we insist that you can look different? I think part of my grappling ... in my own journey, is feeling frustration and guilt that I enjoy something that insists that I cannot look like the person who is the lead, right? What would it have meant if that wasn't a thing to grapple with? Because people telling Jane Austen stories today already did the work of saying, “No, her stories really transcend that. It doesn't have to look like … we expect it to look.”That would have made a difference. And I actually think that “Bridgerton” is insisting that he next time there's a production, if they decide to insist on a certain kind of casting, they're being deliberate and intentional about that. And that's provocative, right? It means that if you are making the new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility [you remember]…  that “Bridgerton” was super successful, right? If you're a person who wants something super successful, how much of success of “Bridgerton” could be attributed to - at least our interest at first - because of that strange world Shonda Rhimes [made] for us. So it would be shrewd for the future adaptors of Jane Austen's work to calculate on whether there is any value in being equally provocative and making us curious. And actually, I do, I think that's more important than I would have expected. And I think - this is the mischief-maker in me - I think it's good to make a person be deliberate in saying, no, they're not going to do something. .. [If] you're making an adaptation, you should have to tell yourself now that you're only going to cast the usual suspects.Plain Jane  Yes, it's changed the default in a way, maybe forever. And maybe it's been a long time coming. I mean, if you look back on so many adaptations, I think very soon, if we don't already, we'll be thinking, “Boy, that is a white world they created, and that doesn't even seem realistic.” OK, so very much a random aside: When you're reading Jane Austen's descriptions of her characters now with a kind of an ear and an eye for colorism and depictions and descriptions, a lot of her lead characters - I think Eleanor Dashwood - [are] just described as Brown. So does that make it easier for you as a writer, a reader when you were younger? Did you like Soniah Kamal, who wrote Unmarriageable and who I've talked with. She said, from the very first time reading, Pride and Prejudice, it was Pakistani. Do you do make things what you need them to be in your head? I know I do as a reader as well.Danielle Christmas I think that's the only way that I can really enjoy Jane Austen. But I like that she makes that possible. ...  I wouldn't go so far as to say that that is on a top 10 list of what makes her so accessible. … You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I really actually do think it's .. that she is so accessible because she makes it so easy for us to be the heroine. I do, you know, just as a reader, as a person who reads Jane Austen, for pleasure, it is easier to be transported by her work than lots of other things that I read that I would consider comparable.Plain Jane  And we won't give her more credit than would have been deserved. But it I think one thing that's interesting as we talk about … the experience of reading is that it might have been unconscious. 5here are a lot of things that can be unconsciously happening. … But either way, it's interesting. Do you have anything else to add that we haven't covered? Danielle Christmas I don't have anything else to add, It's such a pleasure. These were great questions. I hope that it is entertaining and fruitful for listeners. That too on my epitaph: “She was entertaining and taught us stuff”!Plain Jane  You are entertaining, and you have taught us stuff, Danielle Christmas! Thank you so much for joining us on the Austen Connection.And thank YOU, Austen Connection readers, listeners, subscribers, engagers.As always, if you liked this conversation, or think of anyone else who would find it interesting and, as Danielle Christmas says, “fruitful” - please share it!You can also sign up for the Austen Connection, if you haven't already, to get these conversations delivered right ot your Inbox.Here are some awesome links to the things Danielle Christmas talked about in this conversation. Keep reading, and let us know your thoughts. Cool Stuff/Links:The current issue of JASNA's Persuasions Online:  http://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-41-no-2/editors/Jane Austen & Co.'s discussion series “Race and the Regency” - it's awesome: https://www.janeaustensummer.org/raceandtheregencyMore on Jane Austen & Co: https://www.janeaustenandco.org/NYT on Chawton House Museum and Black Lives Matter:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/world/europe/jane-austen-slavery-museum.htmlMore on Danielle Christmas:  https://englishcomplit.unc.edu/faculty-directory/danielle-christmas/ Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

Hello, dear friends!It's here! Episode One/Season One of the Austen Connection podcast. You can press play and listen or stream from any device, and it's also available (we hope) on Apple podcasts. Enjoy, and if you like it, share with your Janeite and bookish friends. Thank you for being here and joining this conversation! One of the most exciting things about Jane Austen is how her stories travel - across continents, across cultures, across time. Like her spiritual brother Shakespeare, her stories contain a universality and also a lot of fun of the sort that works like a passport across these boundaries - and perhaps no one else but Shakespeare comes so close to providing us with stories that connect - if you will - so strongly today. And one thing that a lot of us find exciting, as so many of us are questioning and exploring issues of race and inclusivity in all of our cultures - is how this author who is important to us is also important to so many of our sisters and brothers across continents and cultures. It's just downright exciting.So it's a thrill to share with you a conversation that I had with the author of a book that happens to be a favorite Jane Austen retelling of a lot of Janeites, and scholars, and readers alike: Soniah Kamal's Unmarriageable: A Novel.Unmarriageable tells the story of heroine Alysba, or Alys, Binat and the Binat sisters, who live in Pakistan, teach at an English school, and avoid getting married - that is until the arrogant, wealthy and handsome Darsee comes along and shakes things up. I think you know how this is going to go.  When I reached Kamal she was visiting Pakistan, the place of her birth. Growing up, she also spent time in England, Saudi Arabia and currently lives in Georgia. But in this conversation you could hear Pakistan - its streets and soundscapes - in the background. Kamal and I spoke about why Mansfield Park is her favorite novel, how religious communities that teach Purity, from conservative Islam to Evangelical Christianity, make ideal contemporary settings for Jane Austen's themes, and why she says that ever since she first read Pride and Prejudice at the age of 16 she's always known that Jane Austen was Pakistani. This is the first Austen Connection podcast episode - you can listen here and subscribe to the podcast on Apple. Meanwhile, if you prefer words to sounds, here are edited excerpts from our conversation. Enjoy! -------------------------------Plain Jane:Let me start with a really simple question: When did you first encounter the novels of Jane Austen? When and where and how have Austen and her stories shaped your life ever since?Soniah Kamal: I was first given Pride and Prejudice when I was, I think, around 12, 13, 14 ... by an aunt of mine. And what she gave me was, this was I believe, around the ‘70s. And she gave me a really beautiful red leather-bound copy with gold lettering on it. And I opened it up, and I read the first sentence, which is, you know, “It's a truth universally acknowledged …” etc, etc. And I promptly shut the book and said, “OK, I'm not reading that.” … And I remember thinking, “I don't know what this is, what I just read, I'm not reading this book.” And then I think I was 16 when I finally opened the novel, and I like to joke It must have been a rainy day. But I don't know why I opened it. I started to read it, and I read it cover to cover. And it was a quintessentially Pakistani novel. I mean …  it could have been set in Pakistan completely. I mean, Jane Austen didn't know she was Pakistani, and I actually started calling her Jane Khala in my mind - Khala means maternal aunt ... I just loved the novel. And I actually grew up in Saudi Arabia for a while and went to an international school there. And my library had books from the US and the UK … But the one thing that I never could find back then was a book written in English but set in Pakistan, and English is my first language. English is the official language of Pakistan, it became so in 1947, even though we know the origins of it are not that delightful. But reading Jane Austen at that [time] at 16 … what I started to do, in a lot of my reading was flipped settings and stuff. So like bonnets would turn into buttas, sandwiches would turn into scones and stuff. So when I read Austen at 16, it just seemed, you know, it didn't seem other … Which is why I say that it was a quintessentially Pakistani novel. My brain was already doing that, you know … So just seeing the dialogue, the scenarios, the characters, the concerns, the thematic material. And it's all very relevant to today. Plain JaneAnd that is what we do when we're reading novels. We're using our imaginations to recreate our own world, which is what's so powerful about it. So funny to think about a young Soniah Kamal reading that first sentence that we love, “It is a truth universally acknowledged …” I have some teens in my life, and they have emptied my shelves of Jane Austen, because I press Jane Austen on them. But the thing I'm very careful to say, and you're reminding me, as I always say, “She's sarcastic!” Soniah Kamal I think maybe that's what fascinated me, or at least definitely caught me was that … Yes, it's funny. But the humor is … sarcasm, you know, even the irony and sarcasm are closely related. And I think what I had sort of done to be able to survive myself in the society that I found myself living in, was sarcasm also. So Austen, she was just perfect for me. Her wit, her quips, her social insights. But it wasn't just that she had social insights. ... And she has such an astute understanding of characters, of people. She doesn't mock people; she mocks institutions. And her irony and sarcasm are her medium - of her humor … and I really, really related to that. I really love that. But she wasn't making fun of people. She was making fun of the institutions and the ideas that had given birth to these people. Plain JaneLet's tackle that. I mean, she's not just funny, not slapstick funny, as you say, right? She's wickedly funny because she's taking on these incredible institutions. And she's demanding to be listened to. … Soniah, you tackle a lot of themes in the first few pages of Unmarriageable - I could see that you were tackling so many of the themes that people don't actually associate with Austen: Things like you've just mentioned, like class oppression, gender oppression, hypocrisy of society, things that were not only annoying to women in the Regency era, and in Jane Austen's world, but are dangerous - and are still dangerous today. And really, it's all right there in Unmarriageable in the first few pages. So tell me about how conscious this was for you. Soniah Kamal It was very, very conscious. In fact, what I wanted to do with the first chapter was set up all the thematic material that I felt was in Austen, as well as in Unmarriageable. And Unmarriageable works on two levels. It's a completely stand-alone novel. So if you know nothing about Jane Austen or not coming from Pride and Prejudice, it's still a stand-alone novel in its own right. However, it's also an homage to Pride and Prejudice. I mean, it's a postcolonial parallel retelling, and parallel because it follows the original plot and all the characters are there. And it's a postcolonial retelling because I was trying to remap the linguistic history of British Empire. So this was very much a project for me, rather than just something fun that I thought I would do, you know. And I was very intimidated by what I was setting out to do. I don't know if there's any parallel retelling actually out. I haven't come across one -I think this may well be the first one. But because I was taking on British Empire and postcolonialism also, that was intimidating. I was very intimidated by what I was setting out to do. I don't know if there's any parallel retelling actually out. I haven't come across one -I think this may well be the first one. But because I was taking on British Empire and postcolonialism also, that was intimidating. So on these two levels, I had to satisfy two different groups of readers which are polar opposite - coming from Austen, and not knowing Austen at all. And what I brought for the Austen readers though, what I definitely wanted to do was put easter eggs throughout the the narrative, and they're actually nods to all of her six completed novels as well as Lady Susan. And the very first line, my opening for Unmarriageable is a nod to Pride and Prejudice. And those rewrites, those reimaginings, retellings of her iconic first sentence, continue in the first chapter. But also my favorite Austen novel is actually Mansfield Park. And I think the opening for Mansfield Park is fantastic because it just encapsulates what traditionally, and for centuries, women's lives actually were, which was the ring that your finger wore ended up determining your life and the life of your children, your opportunities, your privileges, and Austen depicts that. … A lot of people don't like Mansfield Park. Like when I say it's my favorite, sometimes I get very odd looks, like, “What's wrong with you?” ...Plain JaneYeah, I'm so with you. And that's the one that I tend to press on my teenagers because I say, “Look, this is about a group of young people stuck in a house together.”Soniah KamalYou know, yes. Interesting. It's so interesting, I've never really thought of it like that. …I mean, the beginning, the opening of Mansfield Park are three sisters. And because of who they end up married to - one of them, you know, lies about on the sofa all day long with her dog; the other one needs to suck up to the owner of the mansion; and the third one has to send her kids away because she can't afford their upbringing. And they've all grown up in the same environment. They're sisters; they've come from the same family; but look at what happened to their life, just by dint of who they ended up getting married to. I think the opening for Mansfield Park is fantastic because it just encapsulates what traditionally, and for centuries, women's lives actually were, which was the ring that your finger wore ended up determining your life and the life of your children, your opportunities, your privileges …And in a lot of traditional cultures, that is still the case. You know, and I'm coming from Pakistan where I see this - saw this then, see this today. And I think what I absolutely loved in [Mansfield Park], it was the first time that I had read a novel where family relationships - in Pride and Prejudice and Emma, etc. … are what Austen really picks apart .. the people visiting and … what is it “one and 20 families” and stuff. But in Mansfield Park, like you said, she keeps this group of people in the house. And what she picks apart are relatives and family relationships and what family means. I think I fell in love with that novel because it is by far one of the realest novels … the most honest novels I have still read about what it means to be and to belong to family. You know, just because .. people are your cousins, just because they're your mother, sisters… it doesn't mean anything. They can still be unkind and cruel. And I think Austen is so amazing for what she's done with Mansfield Park. Plain Jane…And you know everything you were saying Soniah, makes me realize I think a lot of people mistakenly sort of, you know … all of our feminist colleagues and friends, I think sometimes might have the question, “What's relevant about Jane Austen?” And I think maybe that's because with the [screen] adaptations, you think that these are novels about marriage. But really, it's about the precarity of women, and that marriage was the option. Marriage was so important for the reasons you're saying.Soniah KamalI mean, yeah, in Regency England and Austen's time, marriage was the only thing women of a certain class would do. I mean, if you came from the servant classes, you could perhaps gain employment as a cook as a maid, etc. But from Austen's own class, you couldn't do that, the only option you had was to become a governess … So you're very in-between; you were neither here nor there. And Austen doesn't seem to be too happy about that. So Regency England was harsh on women… Plain Jane … and harsh on Jane Austen!Soniah KamalRight but she chose those for herself insofar as she said no to Harris Bigg-Wither. … So it's really interesting to see that off the page [and] on the page. … I think that the worst thing per se was once you got married, any property you brought, your kids, everything - you yourself - belonged to your husband. You were their property. So … saying Yes to someone wasn't just a question of, “Oh, are we going to get along and have lovely strolls …”  It was, if you didn't get along with this person, or if he was cruel or horrible, you were in a bad position as a woman. And the fact is, as we know, with a lot of relationships, things don't stay static; people change. So women, the precariousness of a woman's position in her home, or in her husband's heart, or wherever the hell, in Regency England, was not a fun place to be at all. Because they had no power. They lacked complete agency per se.Plain Jane But the thing that I love, that you mentioned, [is] that Fanny and Eliza and Austen's characters are very astute, and I think that's really, really important in these characters - They're judging us. People are judging each other constantly. And the biggest, and harshest judges are Austen's leading ladies and leading men. They are the smartest people in the room. And you really capture this and I feel like, in a way, Austen, I feel like Pride and Prejudice upends Regency values. … And you have your characters [in Unmarriageable], Alys and Darsee, are the smartest people in the room. They're the judgiest two people in the room, and they judge each other. And there's always this opposition. But that's how in these precarious positions women survive, is by being excellent judges of character and of their situations, and also being honest. Do you find that? Soniah Kamal.... Well first, I think it's interesting that you said, you know about pre-judging and everything, because the thing is Pride and Prejudice is prejudice.  … When you break the word apart, it's pre-judge. ...You're pre-judging everyone. And that's exactly what Elizabeth does. But you know, I find, I think for me, Sense and Sensibility, Lucy Steele, the Steele sisters, but especially Lucy - I personally think out of all of her novels, Lucy is the most astute in many ways ...Plain Jane… and you're reminding me while I'm over simplifying it, in many ways, for brevity, really, there's so many nuances to her characters. Let me ask you a little bit about the characters in Unmarriageable. I love it that, you know, there's always this opposition between the leading man and the heroine that we know need to end up together. And so much suspense is created out of that. And there's so much opposition between them, but at the same time, the reader is allowed to see things that they might have in common. And all of this is in Unmarriageable as well. But it's interesting, what you choose to make Darsee and Alys understand about each other, is there's a sort of global citizenship, the fact that they've had this. And then they've had this postcolonial education .... Very English-first, in so many ways. And Darsee says something very interesting. He says, “We've both been educated on the ‘literature of others.'”What did you mean by having Darsee say this and having this as being the thing that the two-people-about-to-fall-in-love have in common?Soniah Kamal My own background came into my mind. I was like, “OK, you know, they're third culture kids, and they've grown up overseas. They've gone to international schools, and this is what they'll connect over.”And I think partly it wasn't just the ease of knowing this world because I come from it, but also because it was very important for me in the landscape of Unmarriageable. Because Unmarriageable is very much an East-West, East-and-West-come-together book. … You know, there's a line in one of Kipling's poems, where he says, you know, “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” I think in Unmarriageable they definitely do, and very purposefully, because of British Empire. In fact, one of my epigraphs is by Thomas Babington Macaulay ... from his 1835 speech to British Parliament in which he's recommending that English replace all the indigenous languages as the official language in Empire. And that is what ended up happening, and therefore English became the language of privilege, power, opportunity. So, because English became this major, important language, everyone aspired to learn it. The twist comes when, in 1947, British Empire left the Indian subcontinent and Pakistan and India became sovereign countries. Pakistan retained English and declared it as one of its official languages. So English is very much a Pakistani language. However, it happens to be one of the only languages, it's actually the only language I can speak fluently for the most part. …  And I did not know the origins of this language that was coming out of my mouth. I happened to come across Macauley's speech … doing some extra reading for myself. And it was really, it was really disturbing to see, to say the least, because as I say in my epigraph, what he wanted to do was create confused people who are brown in skin but white in sensibilities and basically create confusions ....Plain Jane Yes, and what you're saying - because I did read your epigraph as well, and I had a question for you - that must have been incredibly disturbing. And what he was talking about actually was education, right? You quote him as saying English is better worth knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic. So yeah, I think that's astounding and really needs to be pointed out - that this was creating, like you say, chaos, but also privilege - creating layers of privilege ... Soniah Kamal… Definitely. And we see that in contemporary Pakistan also, because one of the themes in Unmarriageable is the class divide between those who come from an English-fluent, English-language background with … what is considered proper accents … versus those who are not. But the thing is, reading that, reading [Macauley's] essay, reading the origins of this, it was, I mean, ...disturbing is an understatement. And I think for the longest time, I couldn't read that quote out loud without just tearing up. But the fact is that English is the official language in Pakistan, and I wanted to fuse the language that is mine and the culture that is mine. And really, a lot of Unmarriagable came from that desire. And actually a professor of mine at Seattle University called Unmarriageable Macauley's worst nightmare. And I don't know if there can ever be a compliment to top that. Because as British subjects, even postcolonial, you were supposed to look up to everything white and British. … And I guess I did flip the narrative on that one, which was the reason for writing it.Plain Jane And, you know, Darsee and Alys in Unmarriageable are big readers, and your novel is really a celebration of books. And it's a celebration of the English writers that you and Darsee will have grown up with, but also a celebration of Indian and Pakistani writers. As you mentioned to Callie Crossley on WGBH, you hear often that people are encountering and discovering Jane Austen through Unmarriageable and the first time somebody said, “Oh, I loved Unmarriageable, I'm going to check out Jane Austen,” you burst into tears!Soniah Kamal … This is where with empire and countries who have privilege and neocolonialism … what happens is that whereas empire and those of us who are brought up on British literature are aware of Austen and Hardy and Dickens, etc. Someone who wants to flip that will not necessarily, I mean, the general public in certain countries will not be aware of the Pakistani writers and stuff. And in fact, I think Darsee, that's what I think Darsee says at one point, which is … “Will there ever be someone doing that actually?” And that's where power structure comes into play. And that's where sort of pop culture and soft power and dominance, domination happens. And that's exactly what Macaulay meant when he meant “brown in skin, but white sensibilities,” which is that these people will grow up on everything British - British literature … Darsee saying “literature of others.” The fact is, I have grown up on British literature and it's very much mine too. But it was supposed to other me from myself. Because having been brought up in English I was not able to really read things set within the culture itself, which is why I had this burning desire to to read a piece of literature which I'd grown up with, within my own cultural paradigm. The fact is, I have grown up on British literature and it's very much mine too. But it was supposed to other me from myself.So all of this comes into play - just identity politics, and who gets to decide how they're going to change people's identities. All the novels and all the short stories that I've mentioned in Unmarriageable reflect the theme of Unmarriageable and the theme of identity. I think the one that encapsulates it the best for me is the Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko. I think Alys makes her students read her short story, “Lullaby.” “Lullaby” is about children who are taken from Native American tribes by white settlers who had come in and sent [them] to boarding schools, and they were not allowed to speak their tribal languages. They were not allowed to wear their native tribal dress. I believe they had to cut their hair. They did exactly what Macaulay tried to do, which is “brown in skin, but white in sensibility.”And Silko's story is so beautiful, because she talks about what happens when you strip away someone's native identity and try to make them other, and what you do to their souls. ...I wanted to do something which fused this language which is mine, within the culture. So I wanted to do something “light and bright and sparkling” with it. Even though it's very, very heavy, and can be very troubling.Plain Jane It's, it's everything. And, you know, I love that you say Jane Austen is mine and Jane Austen belongs to everyone. You mentioned that someone said to you, Sir Thomas Macaulay would roll over in his grave … or it would be his worst nightmare.  But you know, Jane Austen would have celebrated it and loved it. So, you know, we have Jane Austen's permission. Soniah KamalI hope so. I hope so. … I think she would have chuckled.Plain Jane What would you like the Janeite community to keep in mind to make … the discussions about Jane Austen more inclusive? What should people keep in mind when reading and having these conversations?Soniah Kamal I think it comes down to the readers being aware of the space that Austen is writing in, and what she's writing. And for me, [the books] have always, with their thematic content … been universal across time and centuries. And, just as a writer, she has a certain modern way of writing. You know, she doesn't, unlike Edith Wharton, or unlike Dickens, she doesn't … preach. And she doesn't go off into long pages of descriptions and stuff. She's a very modern when it comes to pacing ...Plain Jane Interesting, so I hear what you're saying - that there's so much universality to pick up and to explore.Soniah Kamal There is, which is why I think with Janeites and with the Austen communities … Austen has a lot to offer readers from all communities and … anyone can read her and find something of worth and merit. Plain JaneYou know, you have managed to write, with Unmarriageable - you called it a parallel retelling - a scene-by-scene retelling, which is fascinating. In some ways, that's a challenge, just to show you can do this scene by scene, even though we are in Pakistan, for this story. And we are, you know, in the early 2000s, I think for most of the story. So we can go across centuries and continents, and still do a scene-by-scene retelling with all the right characters, including Wickham… in Pride and Prejudice. But you also introduced some fascinating [contemporary] things. You introduced some body image concepts, lots of talk about premarital sex, abortions, and also colorism ...I would love to hear you talk about these contemporary themes and also your experiences that also go into this very, very close retelling.Soniah Kamal I always meant to do a retelling because for me, like I said, this was a postcolonial writing back to empire. Remapping empire and its legacy. … So a scene-by-scene retelling is is very difficult because contemporary Pakistan is definitely not Regency England. And anyone who says that does not know what they're talking about as far as I'm concerned. Because in contemporary Pakistan women can get educated; … There are women across the board in all sorts of jobs; you can get a divorce, you're not stuck. You're literally not stuck, jobless. … Yes, there is a bit when it comes to morality, because Pakistan and Regency England still expect its women to be good. And you know, but I always think of it in terms of Evangelical Christianity, which also expected its women to be pure, you know ...Plain Jane Let me jump in there and say that I grew up in Evangelical Christianity, and … that is absolutely a contemporary parallel. And something relevant about Jane Austen's world. [And] it's relevant to my world in the 1980s and 1990s.Soniah Kamal Even today, even today! I mean, Pakistan very much has its own purity culture, where good girls are expected to, you know, uphold certain morals. And if you don't do that, you can get into big trouble. And so thematically, doing a parallel retelling for me was very easy, because the morality in which Austen's characters function is very much the morality even today in which Pakistani women are supposed to function. Or at least thrive the best. And if you don't, ... like me, if you're opinionated, if you talk back, if you ask things like I would ask my Dad, “Well, you know, what's wrong with smoking? If you can smoke? Why can't I? Why can guys go out at this time at night? And why can't I?” You know, just to give it just to give very teen-agey examples. So this material, I think, especially with more traditional societies and more religious societies, definitely, definitely resonates. —-Thank you for listening, friends! As always, talk back to us. Wherever you're reading from right now, how do Austen's stories connect with you? Let us know! Comment below, or write me at austenconnection@gmail.com, at @AustenConnect on Twitter, or austenconnection on Instagram. And if you're not yet part of the Austen Connection community, join us with a free subscription, to get every podcast episode and conversation dropped right into your inbox.If you liked this conversation, feel free to share it! Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

New York to London: 1800-25 days; 1900-5 days; 2000-5 hours. What else changed in that period? White settlers in Africa and America did many bad things but that doesn’t turn the natives into saints. Like poverty, suffering confers no moral virtue. Susan Lapin won’t listen to this part of the program where I describe what Africans did to fellow Africans and what the Iroquois tribes of American Indians did to the Algonquin tribes of American Indians. No massaging  you with warm butter in this show. Only humans torture and torment for entertainment and pleasure. No animals do so. You’ll be surprised when I tell you  what this proves. Is the titanic cultural struggle tearing apart American society really between the Barbarians and the Bible Believers? If you associate the words ‘underclass’ and ‘black’ you’ve been indoctrinated into believing a lie. In this show, you will learn about the white underclass, and the behavior, lifestyle, and culture that condemn you to poverty regardless of the color of your skin. The one factor that unifies all the rioters regardless of their race, class, or gender. Having a job is more usefully educational than attending 11th or 12th grade at a GIC. The Biblical value of work and why we do it. What exactly makes someone unemployable?

New York to London: 1800-25 days; 1900-5 days; 2000-5 hours. What else changed in that period? White settlers in Africa and America did many bad things but that doesn’t turn the natives into saints. Like poverty, suffering confers no moral virtue. Susan Lapin won’t listen to this part of the program where I describe what Africans did to fellow Africans and what the Iroquois tribes of Native America did to the Algonquin tribes. No massaging you with warm butter in this show.  Only humans torture and torment for entertainment and pleasure. No animals do so. You’ll be surprised when I tell you what this proves. Is the titanic cultural struggle tearing apart American society really between the Barbarians and the Bible Believers? If you associate the words ‘underclass’ and ‘black’ you’ve been indoctrinated into believing a lie. In this show, you will learn about the white underclass and the behavior, lifestyle, and culture that condemn you to poverty regardless of the color of your skin. The one factor that unifies all the rioters regardless of their race, class, or gender. Having a job is more usefully educational than attending 11th or 12th grade at a GIC. The Biblical value of work and why we do it. What exactly makes someone unemployable? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Netflix's latest release, French film Mignonnes (or Cuties in English) by Maïmouna Doucouré, has everyone talking about it—but not in a positive light. With posters and trailers depicting preteen girls dancing lewdly to inappropriate music and wearing provocative clothing, this film has enraged quite a number of people, from Netflix users to state representatives, some even calling for the platform to be cancelled. However, there is more to this film than what's shown at face value, which is why Farheen decided to sit down and talk about it, along with some special guests: Soniah Kamal, author of the acclaimed novel Unmarriageable, and Sumana Syed, a first-year film student and production manager of Authentic & Unfiltered. Featuring: Soniah Kamal (@soniahkamal) and Sumana Syed (@sumana.f.syed) Follow Farheen on Instagram: @authentic.unfiltered or visit her website: farheenraza.com Hosted by: Farheen Raza Production Manager: Sumana Syed --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Lois Reitzes interviews author Soniah Kamal about her book “Unmarriageable,” a Pakistani take on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”; and Carl Anthony and Leatrice Ellzy about the virtual series "Conversations about Jazz and Other Distractions" hosted by Hammonds House Museum;

Today we have a conversation between Roselle Lim, author of "Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop," and Soniah Kamal, author of "Unmarriageable."

Y'all! It's been a long time, and I've missed you. I've got a list of twelve, as well as a few life updates (foster care, baby making, ya know, the usual). Hope your summers are winding down well and that you're feeling hopeful and expectant for what Fall holds. 12. Psalm 61 & 62 11. Perfect Bars 10. ESPN 30 for 30 Podcast 9. Laughter Permitted Podcast 8. Budgeting 7. After Life: My Journey from Incarceration to Freedom by Alice Marie Johnson 6. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah 5. Mexico City Restaurant in La Junta, CO 4. My mama and her sister, Cindy 3. Poets and Saints by All Sons and Daughters - Heaven Meets Earth, I Surrender, You Are Love and Love Alone 2. Psalm 145 1. Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

Well, Polli FINALLY got Kate to read a Jane Austen book. Find out if she hated it as much as she hated the audiobook intro music! Also get some great recommendations for some sweet gay reads and a few new releases coming out this fall!   Show notes: https://lplks.org/blogs/post/043-bennett-darcy-gramlich-kenn Two Book Minimum: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai Autoboyography by Christina Lauren Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis (out in Sept. 2019!) The Man They Wanted Me to Be by Jared Yates Sexton Also mentioned, coming out this fall: The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (Oct 2019) and The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman (Sept 2019) She Said/She Said: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen We don't often tackle classics on this podcast, so this is a rare treat! (..Right?) We do include spoilers because, as they say, it's been out for a "hot century." Polli also found some fantastic contemporary retellings of Pride and Prejudice set around the world: Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin Pride by Ibi Zoboi (e-audiobook on Hoopla!) Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal  Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev Longbourn by Jo Baker An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aiden Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith --------------------- 2019 Book Squad Goals Reading Challenge can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/LPLBSG2019 Twice(-ish) a month, the librarians are in, with their favorite recommendations in Two Book Minimum, a toe-to-toe discussion on a book or topic, as well as news from the book world, updates from Lawrence Public Library, and beyond. This episode was produced by Jim Barnes in the Sound & Vision studio. Our theme song is by Heidi Lynne Gluck. You can find the Book Squad Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud. Please subscribe and leave us comments – we’d love to know what you think, and your comments make it easier for other people to find our podcast. Happy reading and listening! xo, Polli & Kate

Amanda and Jenn discuss Norwegian authors, multigenerational family novels, thrillers, and more in this week’s episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored The Guest Book by Sarah Blake and Audible. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher. Feedback Eat Up by Ruby Tandoh (rec’d by Caroline) Questions 1. Hey Get Booked! Thank you for the invaluable service you provide. I’m traveling to Norway for a few weeks this summer and I’d like to read a novel set in Norway and by a Norwegian author. Ideally it would have a strong sense of place. I’m trying not to read books by cis men, so if you could avoid them, that would be great! I like most genres, but I’m not interested in children’s or middle grade books. YA might be okay if it isn’t about teen romance. Books I’ve read and loved recently include the Broken Earth Trilogy, Trail of Lightning, Normal People, Mr. Splitfoot, Everything Under, Unmarriageable, and Made for Love. -Caroline   2. Hi Amanda and Jenn, I am very afraid of flying and have a work trip coming up (11h flight). I need a book that will keep me hooked for hours but won’t build up my anxiety. I do have a few restrictions: I recently went through a traumatic event and anything including/mentioning shootings or terrorism will trigger my anxiety. So please nothing including these topics. Of course, I would also like to avoid anything involving a plane crash

Talking with Matt Lewis about sex robots, prostitution, unmarriageable men, marriage & the #metoo movement.

Three Books is Ela Area Public Library’s podcast series where our hosts, Becca and Christen, chat about three popular/favorite books. This month, it's just Christen and Becca . . . and possibly a ghost? 00:03:39 The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee00:07:31 The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzie Lee00:13:28 Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik 00:21:35 The ILA YASF Tournament of Books00:23:22 Dread Nation by Justina Ireland 00:26:40 The Cruel Prince by Holly Black00:35:53 C2E2 00:41:32 What’s wrong with Jane Austen adaptations?00:44:41 Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal 00:51:54 Pride by Ibi Zoboi00:54:32 Every Day by David Levithan 00:59:57 Good Riddance by Eleanor Lippman01:05:11 Recap of books01:05:37 The Tolkien Exhibit in New York01:12:25 Bookish QuoteShow notes and additional information: eapl.org/threebooks

Kaytee and Meredith are so excited to get back into our discussion this week that we have a hard time keeping our bookish opinions to ourselves. You’ll hear a “bookish moment of the week” from each of the hosts: getting sucked in by a book to the detriment of…. the rest of your life, and fun book mail deliveries. Next, we discuss our current reads. We have some very seriously large opinions about our books this week. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like for Meredith to get spicy, you’re in luck! Our deep dive this week centers on the Currently Reading Challenge! If you’ve been wondering about some of our favorite classics for that second category on your challenge sheet, you are in luck! We’ve got 20 titles for you for this category alone! As always, we finish up with A Book (yep, capitalized) that we’d like to press into every reader’s hands: two more classics are on our lists this week. They’re both lovely and SO vital to the reading cannon. As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you’d like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don’t scroll down!  .  .  .  .  .  4:18 - Episode 7 with Jessica Turner 4:32 - When I Pray for You by Matthew Paul Turner (one day left for that awesome pre-order bonus!) Get that here: http://matthewpaulturner.com/books/when-i-pray-for-you/ 6:18 - The Au Pair by Emma Rous 6:30 - The Book Drop subscription 10:08 - Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris 10:10 - Bring Me Back by B.A. Paris 10:11 - The Breakdown by B.A. Paris 10:41 - The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton 10:47 - The Witch Elm by Tana French 11:25 - The Lost Man by Jane Harper 11:46 - The Dry by Jane Harper 11:47 - Force of Nature by Jane Harper 13:53 - The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough 16:05 - Mac Undercover (Mac B., Kid Spy #1) by Mac Barnett 16:17 - The Impossible Crime (Mac B., Kid Spy #2) by Mac Barnett 21:51 - Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin Manuel Miranda 21:58 - Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow 24:54 - PBS Hamilton Documentary 25:48 - Class Mom by Lori Gelman 26:04 - Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 28:24 - Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple 29:42 - We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter 32:37 - Sarah’s Bookshelves Live Podcast 33:48 - In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 35:50 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 37:05 - East of Eden by John Steinbeck 38:53 - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie 39:34 - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 41:05 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 42:43 - Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery 42:45 - The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery 43:18 - The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 43:46 - 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44:21 - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 44:57 - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 45:46 - Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers 45:55 - Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie 46:04 - Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White 46:15 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 46:16 - The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 46:35 - 1984 by George Orwell 46:46 - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 46:56 - Lord of the Flies by William Golding 47:32 - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien 47:57 - Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 50:31 - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 51:16 - The Hating Game by Sally Thorne 51:46 - Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal 52:46 - Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld 52:48 - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Steve Hockensmith *Please note that all book titles linked above are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!* 

Written more than 200 years ago, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" has been widely adapted into films, television shows and spanned book genres from horror to young adult fiction. Soniah Kamal's novel, "Unmarriageable," sets the stinging social satire, memorable characters and plot in contemporary Pakistan. Kamal joined "On Second Thought" to discuss her novel, her love of Austen and her appearance at the Savannah Book Festival in February.

Today's show highlighted authors Soniah Kamal and Goldie Taylor, along with discussions on sports fans and information on an upcoming Georgia entertainment caucus. "Unmarriageable" is author Soniah Kamal 's modern adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," set in Pakistan. The novel follows teacher Alys Binat as she navigates family, romance and her own misconceptions about the dashing Valentine Darsee. Kamal joined "On Second Thought" to discuss the inspirations for her novel and her appearance at the Savannah Book Festival next month.

S4 E01: In this episode, meet memoirist Dani Shapiro, author Soniah Kamal, and professor Emily Bernard. From fearless family memoirs to updating classic fiction to reflect her own culture, each of these authors’ works share deeply personal pieces of themselves. Hear how the recording process affected each writer and, discover which author’s dreams of being an actress were finally achieved in the recording booth. Enjoy! Inheritance by Dani Shapiro: https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/554262/inheritance/ Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal: https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/567399/unmarriageable/ Black Is the Body by Emily Bernard: https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/538934/black-is-the-body/

This week, Liberty and María Cristina discuss Golden State, The Red Address Book, Unmarriageable, and more great books. This episode was sponsored by the Read Harder Journal, The Wicked King by Holly Black, and ThirdLove. Subscribe to All the Books! using RSS or iTunes and never miss a book. Sign up for the weekly New Books! newsletter for even more new book news. Books discussed on the show: Golden State by Ben H. Winters The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer The Cold Is in Her Bones by Peternelle van Arsdale The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg Unmarriageable: A Novel by Soniah Kamal As Long As We Both Shall Live by JoAnn Chaney Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe What we're reading: Transcription by Kate Atkinson Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark  More books out this week: Restoration Heights: A Novel by Wil Medearis Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros by Michael Chabon Talent by Juliet Lapidos The Gutter Prayer by Gareth Hanrahan That Churchill Woman: A Novel by Stephanie Barron Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution by Helen Zia The Eulogist: A Novel by Terry Gamble Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring by Richard Gergel The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious) by Maureen Johnson Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison - Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out by Jason Rezaian Song of the Dead (Reign of the Fallen) by Sarah Glenn Marsh The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy) by S. A Chakraborty The Golden Tresses of the Dead: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley The Wartime Sisters: A Novel by Lynda Cohen Loigman Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land Circle of Shadows by Evelyn Skye Escape from the Palace (The Royal Rabbits of London) by Santa Montefiore and Simon Sebag Montefiore Ship of Smoke and Steel (The Wells of Sorcery Trilogy) by Django Wexler The Burning Island by Hester Young The Suspect by Fiona Barton Imprison the Sky (The Elementae) by A.C. Gaughen Miraculum by Steph Post The Hod King (The Books of Babel) by Josiah Bancroft The Woman Inside: A Novel by E. G. Scott Holy Lands by Amanda Sthers 99 Nights in Logar by Jamil Jan Kochai The Weight of a Piano: A novel by Chris Cander The Current: A Novel by Tim Johnston The Snow Leopard Project: And Other Adventures in Warzone Conservation by Alex Dehgan The Birds, the Bees, and You and Me by Olivia Hinebaugh Someday We Will Fly by Rachel Dewoskin Only a Breath Apart: A Novel Katie McGarry Vultures by Chuck Wendig The Nowhere Child: A Novel by Christian White The Kindness of Strangers (New York Review Books Classics) by Salka Viertel Learning to See: A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman Who Revealed the Real America by Elise Hooper The Witches of St. Petersburg: A Novel by Imogen Edwards-Jones

As of this morning, we hit 50,000 downloads of The Crystal Paine Show. Y'all! I can hardly believe it! Your support and cheerleading as I've started this new endeavor has truly blessed me more than I can adequately express. After dreaming of having a podcast for over 4 years, this just feels surreal. Thank you for tuning in each week, for subscribing, for telling your friends, and leaving reviews. You all are the best! On this week's episode, I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite ways to earn free gift cards by scanning my grocery receipts, we'll talk about how to help your kids be more careful and avoid online bullying, I'm sharing about a book that impacted me when it comes to friendship. Anne Bogel joins me for a fun (and inspiring!) conversation about how busy women can find more time to read and where to find great book recommendations (plus insider tips on why Anne doesn't read on airplanes and how she survived book tour!). And then I close out the show by sharing the short list of things I try to do every single morning. In This Episode: [01:46] - Did you know you can earn free gift cards just for scanning your grocery receipts? Yup, I tell you the free app I use to do this! [04:44] - Online bullying is a real thing and it's something that we need to help our teens know how to navigate. I share some of the ways we are seeking to do this in our home with our oldest, Kathrynne. [08:05] - My book of the week is a book that I actually almost didn't finish... but I'm so glad I did because the second half was just so good! [11:28] - This week's guest, Anne Bogel, shares her top tips for busy women who want to find more time to read. [13:05] - Struggling to find books you will love to read? Anne talks about where to start and how to find great book recommendations (and she gently disagrees with me on the method I share for how I find great book recommendations!) [16:32] - Anne has an incredibly full and varied life and yet she still finds lots of time to read. She tells us her personal tips and tricks for making reading a priority in her own life. [19:57] - I ask Anne a kind of selfish question -- one that I've been really curious about for a long time. I loved her answer and it gave me a lot of food for thought when it comes to why I love the books I love. [22:18] - What is Anne reading right now? And how did she end up reading three different books based on Pride and Prejudice? And what's saving her life right now? [26:54] - Today’s Q&A segment question is all about what my morning routine looks like. I share the things I do every morning to start my day well. If you have any questions that you’d like me to address in a future episode, email me at crystal@moneysavingmom.com! Links and Resources Mentioned in the Show: The Fetch Rewards app -- use code WW7XJ and you’ll get a bonus 2,000 points (worth $2). (Read my full review here with details on how it works.) The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch Twigby Anne Bogel Reading People by Anne Bogel I’d Rather Be Reading by Anne Bogel Modern Mrs. Darcy What Should I Read Next? with Anne Bogel (podcast) Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal Pride by Ibi Zoboi Heartstone by Elle Katharine White The Story Shop Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen CrystalPaine.com MoneySavingMom.com YourBloggingMentor.com My Instagram account (I’d love for you to follow me there! I usually hop on at least a few times per day and share behind-the-scenes photos and videos, my grocery store hauls, funny stories, or just anything I’m pondering or would like your advice or feedback on!) Have feedback on the show or suggestions for future episodes or topics? Send me an email: crystal@moneysavingmom.com How to Listen to The Crystal Paine Show The podcast is available on iTunes, Android, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can listen online through the direct player we’ll include in the show notes of each episode. OR, a much easier way to listen is by subscribing to the podcast through a free podcast app on your phone. (Find instructions for how to subscribe to a podcast here.) Ready to dive in and listen? Hit the player above or search for “The Crystal Paine Show” on your favorite podcast app. Sponsor Spotlight Today’s episode is sponsored by Twigby — a company dedicated to providing fantastic phone service at great prices. As I mentioned in the podcast, if you are looking for a great deal on a phone for your teen (or yourself!), I’d highly recommend checking out what Twigby has to offer. Unlike traditional cell phone companies, they give you the ability to create your own custom, prepaid plan — without a contract or an unnecessary activation fee. You don’t have to mess with going to a store and picking out a phone plan. You just go to their site, pick your phone plan and either switch your current phone over or get a new phone, and they get it all set up for you. My favorite part about their service (in addition to their great prices!) is that they offer plan flexibility with the ability to change plans or phones at any time for free. You’re not locked into an expensive contract that has activation and termination fees. They also offer Free Overage Protection, so you can rest easy in knowing that you will never be charged for overages without your go-ahead! You have complete control. Special offer! Want to save 25% off your first 6 months of Twigby? Click here. Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission — at no additional cost to you. Thank you so much for your support!