Babes in Bookland

What do you do when the person who destroyed your family is also, undeniably, a human being? That's the question at the center of Nadia Bowers's Dear Dealer , and it's the question we sit with for this entire conversation. Nadia's sister Sasha died in 2015 after taking drugs laced with fentanyl, and rather than write a simple story of a villain and a victim, Nadia spent nearly a decade writing directly to the man who sold them to her. We talk about the letter that became a This American Life episode in 2018, the moment a producer emailed her that JJ Abrams wanted to option it as a film, and the year she spent unweaving a seven hundred page draft written entirely as letters before finding the structure that let the book breathe. Nadia talks about reading Truth & Beauty , Ann Patchett's memoir about her friendship with Lucy Grealy, years before Sasha died, and tucking away the idea that grief could be written about honestly and lovingly at once. We get into the specific stigma that surrounds women and addiction, the friend whose book on losing loved ones to the opioid crisis helped Nadia think about radical acceptance, and the moment her husband suggested her sister might have been closer to the dealer's side of the story than either of them wanted to admit. This is a conversation about what we owe the dead, what we owe ourselves, and how you write your way into forgiveness without forcing it. Share this conversation with anyone who has ever loved someone impossible to hold onto. "I think maybe grief doesn't grow up, doesn't wither. It stays stubborn and young, rooted in the moment it was born." - Nadia Bowers, Dear Dealer Books referenced: Dear Dealer by Nadia Bowers Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love and Loss by Stephanie Wittels Wachs Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it take to reclaim a woman's story when history itself was written by people who had every reason to erase her? That's the question at the center of our conversation with Ariel Lawhon, bestselling author of The Frozen River and her newest novel, The Pirate Queen, about the real life Irish chieftain Grace O'Malley. We talk about why Grace doesn't appear anywhere in official Irish history, and how the only record of her survives in the snide, grudging English state papers written by the empire that feared her. Ariel explains that she's drawn again and again to subversive women because women have always had to be subversive, and because for most of history, only the literate got remembered, which meant most women simply didn't. From Nancy Wake to Martha Ballard to Grace herself, she talks about borrowing personality and instinct from the women in her own life to fill in the gaps history left behind, sometimes literally turning a character into her own mother. We get into her process too, how she became a devoted plotter out of necessity after having four sons in five years and learning to write in stolen thirty minute increments, and how she still treats a deadline with the gravity of its original meaning, a line you did not want to cross on a battlefield. There's a genuinely magical detour into the children's book she read in an abandoned two room schoolhouse in New Mexico decades later and found sitting in a pile on the floor, the exact copy, waiting for her. And we spend real time on the moment in The Frozen River that readers talk about most, when Martha Ballard delivers her own kind of justice, and what it means that women are so often expected to pull their punches in fiction the way men never are. Ariel and I talk about intuition, the knowing, and trusting it, sometimes because it's the thing that keeps you alive. Share this conversation with the woman in your life who needs a reminder that the world has always underestimated women like Grace O'Malley, but Grace still soared. “Because men will never respect you if you try to be like them.” Gráinne lifts her head and meets her mother’s gaze. “Then how will they respect me?” “They won’t,” Maeve says with a shrug. Then she takes her daughter’s face in her hands and brings it close. Until their noses touch and their breath mingles. “Not unless you make them.” -excerpt from THE PIRATE QUEEN by Ariel Lawhon Connect with Ariel Lawhon: @Ariel.lawhon Books Referenced: THE PIRATE QUEEN by Ariel Lawhon THE FROZEN RIVER by Ariel Lawhon CODE NAME HÉLÈNE by Ariel Lawhon FLIGHT OF DREAMS by Ariel Lawhon WAIT FOR ME, WATCH FOR ME, EULA BEE by Patricia Beatty CHRONICLES OF NARNIA by C.S. Lewis THE HOBBIT by J.R.R. Tolken LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolken WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams BARRIERS TO ENTRY by Ariel Lawhon (short story) Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it cost to love a place and a faith that shaped you, even after they've hurt you? This week I sit down with Emilee Hackney, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir All That's Unseen , to talk about growing up in Tazewell, Virginia, and the long, winding path that took her from a Pentecostal church pew to Harvard Yard to a bestseller list. We talk about the church she grew up in from age five, the engagement she entered as a teenager, and the slow, painful process of questioning beliefs she'd never been taught to question until she left home for Harvard. Emilee is remarkably generous about her younger self throughout our conversation, and that same compassion runs through every page of her book. We get into the isolation she felt as an Appalachian student surrounded by people who saw her as, in her words, an exotic creature from a shameful corner of the country, and how spite became an unlikely motivator for her education. Of course... politics come up too. Emilee doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable truths in her research, from Trump's proposed defunding of the Appalachian Regional Commission to his rollback of coal dust health protections, even as she pushed back against easy judgments of the people who voted for him anyway. We talk about fear as a political currency, about algorithms that feed conservatism to anyone who engages with Appalachian content, and about the quiet apathy Emilee believes both parties have shown her home region for generations. We end with hope, opossums, and the strange, permanent tension of loving a place you can never quite be happy in or without. This is a memoir about reckoning with faith, class, and identity, and Emilee brought every bit of that nuance into our conversation. Share this conversation with anyone who grew up somewhere they had complicated feelings about leaving. "A personal essay, as it turned out, was about more than the people and places I knew. It was about how those people and places affected me: how I saw them, how I interpreted them, how I understood them in my greater understanding of the world." - Emilee Hackney's memoir ALL THAT'S UNSEEN Connect with Emilee Hackney: @emileehackney Books Referenced: ALL THAT'S UNSEEN by Emilee Hackney STOLEN PRIDE by Arlie Russell Hochschild Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the woman we've been taught to hate for six centuries was just doing what it took to survive in a world that gave her almost no options? That's the question Rachel Hochhauser sat with long before she ever sat down to write, and it's the question that turns into her debut novel, Lady Tremaine , the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick that reimagines Cinderella's stepmother as a woman worth understanding rather than a woman worth fearing. Rachel and I talk about how the idea found her at the hardest possible time, scrolling her phone in a hospital while her husband recovered from emergency brain surgery, suddenly a single parent overnight, when an image of Lady Tremaine stopped her cold. She walks me through the years she spent away from fiction after her first manuscript didn't sell, the puzzle company she built in that gap called Piecework, and what it meant to come back to her desk and have it feel, in her words, like coming home to herself. We get into her research process, including a deep dive into falconry that started with a pandemic hotel workshop and turned into Lucy, the peregrine falcon who becomes one of the book's most vivid characters. And we talk about Ellen, her version of Cinderella, and why Rachel chose to make her one of the more complicated, less immediately likable Cinderellas in the canon, and why that complication is the point. We also get into the line Rachel calls her favorite in the entire book, the one she was writing toward long before she knew how she'd get there, and what it means that the book ends up being a message from a mother to her daughters instead of a fairy tale ending at all. Share this conversation with the friend who still has strong feelings about Ever After. “Goodness is always contextual.” ― Rachel Hochhauser, LADY TREMAINE Connect with Rachel Hochhauser: @hochhauser Books Referenced: LADY TREMAINE by Rachel Hochhauser Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if recovery was never meant to be a finish line? Mallary Tenore Tarpley spent over twenty years writing and rewriting the story that became Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery , and what she landed on upends how we're taught to think about healing. She calls it the middle place: the space between acutely sick and fully recovered where most people actually live, and where almost no one gives them permission to stay. Mallary story starts at eight years old, when her mother died of metastatic breast cancer. In the wreckage of that loss, an idea took root that if she could keep her body the same size it was when her mother was alive, she could stop time and stay close to her. That thought, formed by a grieving child in a health class learning about good foods and bad foods, spiraled into anorexia and five hospitalizations at Boston Children's, followed by seventeen months in residential treatment. It is a reminder that eating disorders are rarely about vanity. They're about control, grief, and a body trying to speak what a person cannot yet say out loud. We talk about why Mallary built her memoir as reported journalism as much as personal narrative, weaving in the voices of 700 survey respondents and 175 interview subjects specifically because she didn't want her story, as a thin, white, middle class woman, to stand in as the only face of this disease. We get into what it was like reading her own childhood journals, calorie counts and self-loathing tucked inside Winnie the Pooh covers, and the moment she caught herself slipping back into old behaviors just from transcribing them. We talk about the staggering gap in medical training, the history of women being excluded from clinical trials, and how diet culture, GLP-1 drugs, and AI beauty filters are reshaping an old danger into something that feels newly urgent. And we talk about what it means to write an ending that refuses a tidy bow, because pretending to be fully healed would have made her, in her words, an unreliable narrator. If you've ever felt like you were failing at recovery because you weren't finished with it, this conversation is for you. Share this conversation with someone who needs permission to be in progress instead of fixed. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline is 866-662-1235 , open 9:00am–7:00pm EST Monday–Friday. It's not a 24/7 crisis line — for after-hours support, they direct people to 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) or text "NEDA" to 741-741 Connect with Mallary Tenore Tarpley: https://www.mallarytenoretarpley.com/ @ mallarytenoretarpley Books Referenced: SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating-Disorder Recovery by Mallary Tenore Tarpley Articles Referenced: We Keep Arguing About Ariana Grande's Body. We're Missing the Bigger Story When I Lost My Sense of Taste to Covid, My Anorexia Stepped In (gifted) Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is a sobriety memoir still honest if the author was relapsing while she wrote it? That's the question Suz and I couldn't shake after reading and listening to Jodi Sweetin's "UnSweetined", and it's why we brought this one back as a bonus episode. We dug into Jodie's story from Full House's beloved Stephanie Tanner to the meth addiction she hid for years, and we couldn't agree on much except this: the book is fascinating, fast paced, and also strangely hard to trust. Jodie wrote most of "UnSweetined" while she was actively using, only getting sober once she became a mother, and we talked about what that means for a memoir that's marketed as a redemption story. We got into the newer audiobook forward Jodie recorded sixteen years after the book's original release, where she updates listeners on two more marriages, another child, and a version of sobriety she never quite defines for us. We also spent time in the good stuff, the Full House trivia we didn't know and the way the cast really did seem to love each other. But we kept circling back to the same tension. Jodie is disarmingly honest about her own manipulation and dishonesty, and yet there's a lack of accountability running underneath all of it, a scapegoating that never quite resolves. We talked about what we expect from addiction memoirs, whether humor can be armor, and whether a book like this would exist at all if she weren't famous. Share this conversation with someone who grew up watching Full House, or with anyone who's ever wondered what a redemption arc actually requires. "I still don't know what it was that I was so unhappy about. To some people it probably looked like I had it all. If I had to sit and list what was bothering me at the time, I don't think I could have done it. All I knew was that I didn't want to be me." - Jodie Sweetin Thank you for supporting the show! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when a book gives you everything you want on the surface and still leaves you wanting more underneath? I'm back with a mini review of Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About , the debut memoir from Isabel Klee, the writer and content creator behind the dog-rescue account @simonsits. The book chronicles Isabel's twenties in New York City: a string of complicated boyfriends, a tight community of women figuring life out alongside her, and a parade of foster dogs she helped rehabilitate and rehome, including her first true love, a rescued pup named Simon. I dig into what worked and what didn't, and along the way, I share my own dog story, adopting my scrappy one-eared rescue terrier during my first stretch of living alone, and make the case for solo living as one of the most underrated things you can do for yourself in your twenties, lease restrictions and all. Share this conversation with someone who has a rescue dog story of their own. Please rate and review the show and share this conversation with someone who grew up in the church and is still working out which parts of their faith are actually theirs. "Love and patience could heal a broken dog, but, most of the time, it wasn't going to heal a broken man." - Isabel Klee Connect with Isabel Klee: @simonsits on instagram Books Referenced: Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About by Isabel Klee Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when you finally stop believing something just because you were told to, and start asking if it's actually true? TikTok creator, singer, and now memoirist Ariel Fitz-Patrick joins me on Babes in Bookland to talk about her new memoir I See for Myself , which takes her viral catchphrase and turns it into a full reckoning with faith, family, and growing up in a strict Pentecostal household. Ariel opens up about being raised by Caribbean immigrant parents in Quebec, the birthday party she wasn't allowed to fully attend, being thrown into a French-language school with zero support at fourteen, and the moment at twelve years old when she realized she didn't actually know God, she just knew of him. This conversation moves through doubt, poverty, spiritual warfare, and what it actually means to build a faith that's yours instead of one you inherited. Please rate and review the show and share this conversation with someone who grew up in the church and is still working out which parts of their faith are actually theirs. "I'm telling you to be intentional about how you trust to help you walk through this difficult, confusing, frustrating, maddening thing we call life." - Ariel Fitz-Patrick Connect with Ariel Fitz-Patrick: @arielfitz.patrick @Ariel.fitz (tik tok) Books Referenced: Imma See for Myself by Ariel Fitz-Patrick Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is your ripple effect? This week I'm joined by bookstagrammer and journalist Ashley Kritzer (@ashleykrtizer on instagram!) to talk about LABOR by Dr. Mary Afsari, a memoir Ashley championed hard-- and once I read it, I understood exactly why. In under 200 pages, Mary tells two intertwined stories: her own path as an OBGYN pushed to the edge by burnout, policy, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and her search for the truth about her grandmother's death in Iran. The result is a book that is medically intense without ever being gratuitous, and that manages to be both deeply personal and urgently political. Ashley and I dig into what makes the memoir work: its restraint, its refusal to wander into subplots that don't serve the story, and the dual timeline that lets Mary's family history illuminate her present-day fight for women's healthcare. We talk about the hardest case in the book, a child patient whose story exposes how broken the systems meant to protect her really are. We talk about Mary's decision to build a mobile OBGYN practice out of an RV, entirely self-funded, because the traditional system wasn't serving the women who needed her most. And we talk about the eerie, direct line she draws between the crackdown on women's rights in 1979 Iran and what's happening in America right now. We land, as we always seem to, on the same idea: women taking care of women is one of the most beautiful things. Grab a copy of LABOR by Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari, then come back and listen. Share this conversation with someone who needs the reminder that women taking care of women is still one of the most powerful things in the world. "My belief that we were doing the right thing as the right time is what kept me going." - Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari Connect with Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari: @maryfaribapdx Connect with Ashley Kritzer: @ashleykritzer Ashley Kritzer's Substack Books Referenced: LABOR by Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the company that promises to change the world asks you to disappear into it? Claire Stapleton spent twelve years at Google, first as the internal voice known as the company's Bard, then as one of the organizers of the 20,000-person walkout that made international headlines. In this episode, we dig into her new memoir, Don't Be Evil , tracing her journey from true believer to whistleblower, and what it actually cost her to tell the truth about a company that built its entire identity on a promise it couldn't keep. Claire opens up about the corporate language that slowly ate her own voice, the manager who pushed her off her team while she was pregnant, and the strange psychological architecture of a workplace designed to feel like a religion. She talks candidly about grief, motherhood, and the brother she lost early in her career, whose old Gchat messages became some of her most important source material while writing this book. It's a conversation about power, complicity, and what happens when a woman decides she's done playing the good girl. Send this episode to the friend who still can't quite explain why she left her dream job, or the one who's trying to figure out how to keep her voice inside a company that would rather she didn't have one. Connect with Claire Stapleton: @clairewaves Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Books Referenced: Don't Be Evil by Claire Stapleton Complaint! by Sara Ahmed Careless People Empire of AI by Karen Hao The Managed Heart by Arlie Hochschild Work Rules! Laszlo Bock Other Links: Claire's Substack CNN Business — "One year after the Google walkout, key organizers reflect on the risk to their careers" https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/tech/google-walkout-one-year-later-risk-takers The Guardian (via Yahoo News) — "Demoted and sidelined: Google walkout organizers say company retaliated" https://news.yahoo.com/culture-retaliation-google-employees-punished-222552257.html Gulf News / AFP — "Google walkout organiser quits, citing retaliation fear" https://gulfnews.com/amp/story/world%2Famericas%2Fgoogle-walkout-organiser-quits-citing-retaliation-fear-1.1559966090539 CNBC — "Former Google activist Claire Stapleton is starting an advice newsletter for frustrated tech workers" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/28/ex-google-activist-claire-stapleton-starts-advice-newsletter.html Mashable (via Yahoo News) — "Google employees reveal the hidden costs of speaking out" https://news.yahoo.com/google-employees-reveal-hidden-costs-195821971.html Grokipedia — bio/timeline overview (useful for quick-reference dates and the full organizer list, though not a traditional outlet, so worth double-checking against primary sources) https://grokipedia.com/page/claire_stapleton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when a memoir promises a reckoning but delivers armor instead? In this Babes in Bookland bonus episode, I'm joined by my friend Lizzie to dig into Hayden Panettiere's memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning . Lizzie listened to the audiobook first, and warned me it was painful, so I braced for a gutting, Christina Applegate style read, and came out with a completely different experience of the same book. That gap between the two of us became the real story of this episode. Hayden rose to fame before she was old enough to understand what fame meant, from Remember the Titans to Heroes to two Golden Globe nominated seasons of Nashville, all while quietly carrying the pressure of being Hollywood's It Girl. Her memoir promises postpartum depression, addiction, domestic abuse, and loss, and we both went in rooting for her. What we found instead was a book that kept circling its own most painful moments without ever landing on them, a codependent relationship with her mother that never gets fully named, and a custody decision that's never quite explained. We talk through what worked, why the cover and author photo tell you almost everything you need to know before you even open the book, and why they both think the deeper, more vulnerable version of this memoir is still a few years away. Listen to the full episode to hear us work through it, and let us know: would you recommend this one, or wait for the sequel? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it take to finally name the thing that happened to you? Sarah is the author of She Journeys , a memoir about a military marriage that devolved into betrayal, a helicopter crash, and years of numbness before she could even recognize her own trauma for what it was. We talk about leaving an abusive relationship, the therapist who validated her martial rape, rebuilding faith on her own terms, and the solo road trip across the country that became the beginning of an entirely different life. Share this one with the friend who's in the in-between place after a loss, and the friend who needs to hear that starting over is possible, even when it feels impossible. Links: Instagram: she_journeys Book: She Journeys Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the person hired to keep you safe is fighting a system that would rather look the other way? This week's bite-sized episode dives into Lifeguard, A Love Story , the memoir from Janet Fash, one of the first female lifeguard chiefs in New York City history, co-written with Cleo Chang. I read through Janet's decades on Rockaway Beach, from her start as a hazed rookie lifeguard in the debauchery-soaked 1970s to her years-long battle against entrenched union corruption at the top of the Parks Department. It's part coming of age story, part exposé, and I break down where each half succeeds and where the blend gets uneven, plus why that slow first third might test even the most patient reader. I also gets into the harder threads running through the book: the tragedies Janet survives along the way, the sexism and harassment she faces climbing the ranks, and the quietly devastating stakes of what happens when a beach safety system is run for power instead of people. It's a messy, imperfect memoir about what it actually costs to be the one person willing to keep pushing when everyone else has made peace with looking away. Give this one a listen, then let us know if you made it past that first third. Like, review, and share Babes in Bookland with a friend who needs a stubborn woman in their life this summer. Links: Book: Lifeguard: A Love Story Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the world tells you no, and someone decides to say yes instead? Gaelynn Lea is a folk musician, Broadway composer, and Tiny Desk Contest winner whose memoir It Wasn't Meant to Be Perfect is as funny and warm as she is, even when she's writing about near-death experiences, medical dismissal, and growing up disabled in a world that wasn't built for her. We talk about gatekeepers versus gate openers, the teacher who adapted a violin instead of saying no, sexuality and disability, and the one sentence from a mentor that changed how she thinks about making art at all. Share this one with the friend who's scared to put their creative work out into the world, and the friend who could use a reminder that adapting isn't the same as giving up. Links: Website: violinscratches.com Substack: gaelynnlea.substack.com Instagram/socials: @gaelynnlea Facebook: Galen Lee Creates Book: It Wasn't Meant to Be Perfect Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the coziest story of your childhood was only cozy because someone decided what to leave out? This week Brett is back for a book club chat on Little House on the Prairie and the real manuscript behind it, Pioneer Girl. We get into how Laura Ingalls Wilder's actual life story got rewritten by her daughter Rose into something sellable for Depression-era kids, what got cut along the way (a dead baby brother, a murdered family friend, an entire year of their lives), and the Osage history the books erase almost entirely, land that was never actually free, a removal that happened right past their door. We also talk about Pa, who gets remembered as the moral center of the whole series and maybe doesn't deserve it, and about Yesteryear, this year's buzziest book club pick, where a trad-wife influencer wakes up living the 1855 life she's been selling on Instagram. This is a conversation about which parts of our history get to be cozy and which parts get quietly left out, and who decides. If it resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and send it to a friend who loved these books as a kid too. Books & Sources Mentioned Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography The full Little House series (Laura Ingalls Wilder) The Rose Years series (Roger Lee MacBride) The Caroline Years series (Maria D. Wilkes & Celia Wilkins)Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser Frances Kaye, "Little Squatter on the Osage Diminished Reserve," Great Plains Quarterly (2000) Osage Nation historical documentation (referenced re: 1869–70 removal) PBS American Masters piece on Laura Ingalls Wilder Coming Up Next Week! Author chat with Gaelynn Lea on her memoir It Wasn't Meant to Be Perfect — a folk musician, Broadway composer, and disability advocate on embracing every kind of body. Thank you! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the "honest mom" finally tells you the parts she's never posted? This week I'm talking with Libby Ward about her memoir, Honest Motherhood . Libby built an audience of over 2 million by naming the mental load, the mother wound, and the impossible pressure to be everything. But the book goes further than any caption ever could: her rural church upbringing and the deconstruction that followed, the chaos of her own childhood and the long, complicated work of rebuilding a relationship on her own terms with her mother, and the exact moment in a minivan when she realized she'd become someone she never wanted to be. We talk about trusting her own voice after a lifetime of trusting everyone else's, why she turned down a book deal with a major agent because it wasn't the book she wanted to write, and why writing this one nearly broke her even though the book tour feels like a vacation by comparison. We also get into the humor running through the whole thing, because Libby is proof that funny people usually have a little trauma to thank for it. This is a conversation about permission. Permission to stop performing wellness, to hold boundaries and actually keep holding them, and to feel proud of your own work without waiting for someone else to say it's okay. If the conversation resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with any mom ready to break out of survival mode. “Being honest about what I needed didn’t feel brave— it felt unnatural. No, scratch that. Disappointing other people made me want to peel my skin off.” -- Libby Ward Connect with Libby Ward: @libbyward Support the show: On Patreon . Buy us a book Buy cute merch Buy Honest Motherhood This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex 00:00 — Intro + episode teaser 01:30 — Welcoming Libby, gushing over the book 04:00 — What she's never shared online: her mom, her childhood 07:30 — Her deconstruction journey and leaving the church mindset 11:00 — Why she started sharing online in the first place 14:30 — Turning down the wrong book deal 18:00 — Finding her voice: editors, coaches, and saying no to a ghostwriter 21:30 — Balancing content creation, motherhood, and ADHD ("rubber ball brain") 25:00 — Writing the book was "the seventh layer of hell" 28:30 — How she wove humor into heavy topics 32:00 — Learning to actually feel proud of herself 35:30 — Becoming a mom she didn't want to be 40:00 — The granola bar moment: her breaking point 43:00 — The "ball of yarn" metaphor for untangling trauma 46:30 — Her mother, going no contact, and why 50:30 — Boundaries, hope, and rebuilding the relationship 54:00 — What society needs to change ("men need to enter the chat") 58:00 — Rapid-fire: favorite word, staying hopeful, weirdly competitive 1:01:30 — Where to find Libby + outro 1:02:30 — Next week preview: Pioneer Girl / Little House / Yesteryear with Brett Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for being here! Today, we look back on a few of my favorite clips from the past three seasons! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can you reclaim your truth and your power? We’re diving into Horse Barbie, Geena Rocero’s radiant and illuminating memoir that shows her journey from a one-room home in Manila, Philippians, to trans pageants, from the perfume counter at Macy’s to New York fashion sets, and from private, suffocating, fear to a TED Talk that reframed transness as power. Along the way, we discuss her father’s complicated love, her mother’s unwavering belief and reflect on what can spark when the people who matter most tell you there’s nothing wrong with you. Geena’s story and memoir widens from personal to political: pre-colonial history without gendered pronouns, the costs of documentation that doesn’t match your face, and the power of her viral TED Talk to turn shame into strength. We sit with the big questions: Why is femininity seen as a threat? How do entertainment and policy diverge? What changes when a community moves from visibility to rights? By the end, Horse Barbie reads like a manual for courage. It shows how story becomes strategy and how one woman’s voice can help many step out of the shadows. If you care about trans rights, immigration, pageant culture, modeling, or the way love can change a life, this conversation brings nuance, warmth, and a clear takeaway: policy matters, family matters, and stories move hearts faster than arguments ever will. If the conversation resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs a hopeful, human lens on trans life and advocacy. For the extended discussion of this episode (an additional 24 min), subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Patreon . Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch Buy Horse Barbie Other Links: Evan Hurst substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Special thanks to my dear friend, Jaime! Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Timestamps! 00:21: Intro Buy Geena Rocero's Memoir Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What questions should you be asking the people you love while you still can? That's the thread running through this conversation with Dorothy Roberts, whose memoir The Mixed Marriage Project started with a stack of boxes. After her parents passed, Dorothy opened them and found nearly 500 interviews her white father had conducted with interracial couples in Chicago, beginning in 1937, almost two decades before he married her Black mother. Inside were wild parties, a nudist camp, a turn-of-the-century club for mixed couples, and a file labeled number 224 that turned out to be about her. We talk about the interviews her father never published and the book contracts he kept walking away from, why she hid her father's whiteness from her Black classmates at Yale, and the painful stereotypes that surfaced even inside a club devoted to interracial marriage. We get into the big question at the heart of the memoir too: whether love, the everyday intimate kind, can actually dismantle racism. Spoiler, it's complicated. Dorothy Roberts is a scholar, professor, and author of five books on race, gender, and the systems that devalue Black women and mothers. The Mixed Marriage Project is her first memoir, built from the nearly 500 interviews her father left behind. If this conversation moved you, share it with a friend and leave a review and rating. Purchase The Mixed Marriage Project Support the show: On Patreon Buy us a book Buy cute merch Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Thank you for listening! Xx, Alex Timestamps! 00:01 — Intro: The Mixed Marriage Project 02:22 — Finding the form: memoir as history and social analysis 04:09 — What was the Great Migration 05:55 — Interracial marriage laws, North vs. South 08:00 — The interracial couples' club and its blind spot on Black women 10:56 — Race, racism, and why the questions never get asked 12:19 — Choosing which couples made the book 14:00 — The Albertis: a lifelong family friendship hidden in the interviews 15:22 — Researcher, daughter, or both 16:53 — The twist: her father started this before he met her mother 19:51 — Her father's anti-racism, and the brother who disowned him 23:19 — The India trip that shaped everything 25:06 — Questions she'll never get to ask her parents 26:24 — Writing alongside her sisters, Helen and Evelyn 28:00 — The Bachelor chapter: the nudist camp, the wild party, the sister who wanted it cut 31:40 — A loving memoir, not an attack 33:22 — Her own "bachelorette" stories 34:21 — What her kids might find in her own papers one day 35:37 — Being recorded, being remembered — the podcast as legacy 38:36 — Her father's thesis: can interracial marriage end racism 41:29 — How her views shifted while writing 47:30 — Her father's first interview, 1937, and the racial caste system 49:17 — The book he never finished 51:28 — File 224: discovering she was one of his research subjects 55:59 — Hiding her father's whiteness at Yale 59:04 — Ashamed isn't quite the word 61:06 — Racial identity is made up — and hers is hers 63:06 — Favorite word, staying hopeful, Marvin Gaye Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would it mean to build women's sports around women's bodies? This week, my friend Becca returns to discuss Lauren Fleshman's memoir "Good for a Girl". What starts as a running memoir quickly reveals itself as something far bigger: an investigation into the science of female puberty and athletics, the eating disorder epidemic inside women's collegiate and professional sports, and one woman's relentless fight to change a sport she loves from the inside out. We discuss Lauren's unconventional path to running, the ways puberty has been treated as "the one injury a girl can't come back from," the NCAA's staggering lack of policy around eating disorders in women's athletics, Lauren's famous Nike "Objectify Me" campaign, and the ways female athletes are still being failed by the systems built to protect them. This episode is for every woman who was ever told she was good — for a girl. The runners, the former athletes, the moms of daughters in sports, and anyone who has ever felt their body was working against them instead of for them. If this conversation resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with a friend who needs to hear it, and rate and review the show wherever you listen. It makes a huge difference! Purchase "Good for a Girl" Other Links: https://www.milesplit.com/articles/211759/dear-younger-me-lauren-fleshman (Lauren's letter to her younger self) Follow Becca's bookstagram: @bookedwithbecca and her new running account: @run.with.becca Support the show: On Patreon Buy us a book Buy cute merch Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Thank you for listening! Xx, Alex Timestamps! 00:00 — Intro: Lauren Fleshman's Good for a Girl 01:02 — Why did Becca pick this book? 03:33 — The book's dedication and opening lines 03:57 — How did Becca's running journey begin? 05:15 — How do you stay safe on solo runs? 07:05 — What would you tell your younger self? 08:09 — "You can do anything, Lauren" — her dad's voice in her head 09:58 — How do we hold space for people who shaped us for better and worse? 11:35 — "Dad was a wild tide, but mom was our shore" 12:08 — How do parents give equal love and attention in a big family? 13:44 — Beating the boys, and not questioning it 17:03 — Why do we still say "good for a girl"? 17:51 — Middle school dominance, then puberty hits 19:00 — Do we tie our identity to winning? 19:50 — Becca's Lauren Fleshman sighting on a race course 20:25 — Why are girls quitting sports by 14–17? 22:37 — Why does puberty help boys and hurt girls athletically? 23:32 — The clash between athletic function and the male gaze 25:39 — Finding her running form and making the team 27:20 — When did you first realize the boys were pulling ahead? 29:30 — How did Title IX change the culture of effort? 33:04 — "Puberty is the injury you can't come back from" — what did the captain mean? 34:20 — Why are eating disorders so prevalent in the running world? 35:53 — Why does the NCAA still have no policy on eating disorders? 39:06 — Stanford, Jesse, and asking the hard question up front 40:07 — "What made great women possible?" 41:19 — Body image and the college uniform 42:41 — Equity vs. equality — why "same" isn't fair? 43:16 — Why do female athletes peak in their late 20s and 30s, not their teens? 45:08 — Going pro on a $60K Nike salary 46:04 — Coming heartbreakingly close to the Olympics 47:01 — What happened when she emailed Nike's CEO? 47:46 — The "Objectify Her" campaign — reclaiming the gaze 49:19 — How do you let anger fuel advocacy instead of consuming it? 49:56 — Why did she start her blog? 50:49 — The granola bar company 51:04 — Why did Nike treat her pregnancy like an injury? 51:33 — What real change would actually look like for young female athletes? 52:20 — Final thoughts: what are we taking from this book? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.