Ep. 203 I Live a Life Like Yours by Jan Grue -- The Stacks Book Club (Tessa Miller)

Written By Megan Caballero

Today for The Stacks Book Club we're discussing I Live a Life Like Yours, a memoir by Jan Grue, which explores his experiences as a wheelchair user in Norway. We are joined by author and journalist, Tessa Miller (What Doesn't Kill You) for this conversation on the importance of community, accessibility, and pushing back against stereotypical depictions of disabled people.

Be sure to listen to the end of today's episode to find out what our March book club pick will be!

 
 

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TRANSCRIPT
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Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and it is the stacks book club day. We are discussing I Live a Life Like Yours by Jan Grue. The book is a memoir about groose life in Norway as a disabled man and a wheelchair user. We’re joined by Tessa Miller of What Doesn’t Kill You to discuss the book, the language of chronic illness and disability, the importance of community accessibility, and the question of likeability plus a lot more. Be sure to listen through to the end of the episode to find out what our March book club pick will be. Now it’s time for the socks book club of I live a life like yours by Jan Grue with our guest Tessa Miller.

Alright everybody we are back it is the Stax book club day and we are discussing I live a life like yours A Memoir by Yan grew and we have brought back the wonderful Tessa Miller. Tessa, welcome back.

Tessa Miller 1:47
Hi, everybody. I’m so excited to talk about this.

Traci Thomas 1:51
I’ve been doing this show for for almost five years. And I do a book club episode all the time. And I always forget to explain what the book is in the beginning. And then I get like 30 minutes in. So I’m going to remember to do that right now. It’s one of my New Year’s resolutions is to explain the book. Okay, so I live a life like yours is a memoir by Yan grew, who is we have to get into a lot of this. But basically, it’s his memoir about his life. He was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at a young age, but then we sort of find out that maybe that’s not his diagnosis later in the book. And it’s sort of his experience as a person living with disability. He’s Norwegian, he lives in Norway, though, he does travel a bunch of places throughout the book. So we kind of get that perspective, but it’s really just his memoir about living with his disability. I feel like I nailed that.

Tessa Miller 2:37
That’s, that’s it’s a very straightforward.

Traci Thomas 2:41
there’s not a lot extra to explain. And there may or may not be spoilers in this book, though. I really don’t. I don’t feel like there’s anything to spoil. So if you haven’t read the book, that’s okay. I think you’re safe.

Tessa Miller 2:51
I think you’re safe, too.

Traci Thomas 2:53
Yeah. Okay. What did you think of the book? That’s where we always start?

Tessa Miller 2:56
well, my main feeling and takeaway was that Yan presents this idea throughout the book of, and I think the title of the book gets at this, he has this dual gaze that’s kind of been on him. So he talks about the clinical gaze or the institutional gaze. And how does he reconcile that with just his experience as a, quote unquote, normal child within his family? And as as he grows up and becomes an academic, and he also writes a lot about falling in love with his now wife? Like, how do you join this sort of external self, where people are looking at you in a clinical setting, with all of these feelings of yourself on the inside and within your family? I thought he wrote about that very clearly. And well.

Traci Thomas 3:56
Okay. So here’s what I thought about the book. I was very mixed on the book, because I felt like part of what he did was really keep the reader at a distance from his own personal emotional place. And while he talks a lot about like, the clinical, the way that like, the institutions wrote about him, and to him and his family, I sort of felt like he did a similar thing to us as his reader, where he gave us a little bit of information about him or like a little bit of his thoughts, but because it was written in sort of this like, vignette ish style like these, like little chunks, I never felt like he led us in, and I think probably was a choice, but I definitely felt kept at a distance.

Tessa Miller 4:42
I felt that too and I was wondering if, if you because the book has been translated the book is, yeah, I always wonder that when I read translated texts, right, if it would feel differently if I was reading it in the native language, Is that he wrote in which region? But I, I felt that way too. And there were these moments where you would, he would let you in a little bit like there’s a little there are these sections where he talks about shame and stigma. Yeah. But then it’s immediately on to something else. So you get like a little glimpse. Yeah. And I also wonder if that’s just like a Norwegian.

Traci Thomas 5:23
I wonder that. Like, I don’t know enough about Norwegians and Norway to know if that’s like, that’s a, you know, personality trait of the culture at large.

Tessa Miller 5:36
My mom has had one Norwegian grandparent who I never knew, I only know her in Miss and family legend. And I know that she was a very stoic, like I said, stiff upper lip, lady.

Traci Thomas 5:54
And so let’s take that, let’s take your great grandma and cast out over all Norwegians. I think we’re

Tessa Miller 5:59
Good grandma, grandma allottee.

Traci Thomas 6:02
But the other thing that I thought that this book did for me, which I do not think that Yan did this in the book, but it’s what one of the things that I took from the book was, it really made me think a lot about intersectionality. I don’t think that he talked about intersectionality, basically, at all, but I kept thinking about it because of the omission. And so for me, it actually became a much more interesting and rich reading experience. Because I kept being like, well, this is his experience. But how would a black disabled woman or like, how would a fat, you know, Korean disabled person who you know, who’s come to America, like I kept thinking about these other people that aren’t in the book? And I think like, overall, I generally found this book to be medium. Like, I think if I’m just giving like a general grade, I would say just like, medium, yeah, a b minus b.

Tessa Miller 6:58
I think I would agree. I liked the, I think if you’ve never read a book by a wheelchair user, and you want, I think some of the best scenes in this book and made me like feel the most, were just these the issues of inaccessible spaces that he writes about. So I thought that that that part was probably what kind of like, moved me the most, because I chronically ill, but I don’t have to use mobility aids in I mean, I have used them when I’ve been very sick and hospitalized, but like, I don’t have to use them in my day to day life. And so I think that experience in itself is something that’s important in this book. But I finished it and I felt a little lukewarm, just because I think you captured it when you said that you wish he had let us in a little more. Yeah, it was very much a distance between the reader and the author in this book. And I was left wanting. Yeah, from this book.

Traci Thomas 8:05
Part of me wonders, though, like, I think, as a person who is not disabled, who is not chronically ill, who has been very, very lucky, so far in life to be healthy in pretty much every single way, which is like, you know, such a blessing. I think that my lens is not super honed in to the experiences of people who are going through and like I think that I am certainly ableist in a lot of ways. I mean, I know that I am I cannot even hedging I know that I am everybody is I mean even right, every I think everybody is. Yeah, and he gets it that in the eyes. Yeah, right. But I think one of the things that I kept I don’t know how to say this, I guess. But what I was struggling with slash I think I’m giving him credit for doing but I don’t know if he did it, or if it was just me, is that I kept thinking, like, Oh, I think like with a title, I live a life like yours. He’s trying to put his life in relationship to the lives of the non disabled, right? Like, that’s, that’s who the yours is, I think, for the most part. And I felt like I did connect my life to his story a lot. But I did not feel connected to him. And I’m wondering if as a person who is chronically ill, who just wrote a book, and you’ve read books by other chronically ill people, and you have talked to other chronically ill authors and all of these things. Do you feel like there’s a push from publishing to make books that you have to be super emotionally connected? And is it possible that he was pushing back against that, like, you need to tell us everything about your life, you need to dive into every detail of how it feels and what it looks like and what it smells like and all of that stuff?

Tessa Miller 9:45
Yeah, yeah. I think that there is pressure both in and I’ve experienced this in journalism and in book publishing, where like, they want your war stories. They really want you to like spill your guts. And maybe you’re right, maybe he is. That’s a that’s an interesting lens to see this through is that maybe like you don’t have to, to tell everything and really like, cut yourself open metaphorically to write something that kind of matters, I guess for lack of a better word. I think that that is, that’s a really interesting discussion that I’ve seen less of that discussion in like the chronic illness and disability community, and more of that discussion when we talk about, like sexual harassment and sexual assault, and how women and I felt this way, too, or anyone who’s been harassed or assaulted, it’s like, We’re sick of, you know, having to show our insides to the internet to get people to believe us. And, yeah, maybe there was some purposeful sort of restraint on his part, because he never really gets super detailed about, like, specific trauma, right, you know, or he references his body a lot, but he doesn’t tell us a lot about what his body does. He talks about the form that his body takes and the shapes and but you know, we don’t hear much about his experiences in hospitals, or, you know, various health institutions that he’s been in since childhood. And we don’t hear about he references. Like, this was one part of the book, where I thought that maybe he was going to let us in a little bit. And that’s where he mentioned, like, his first sexual experience, but then he doesn’t tell us anything about it. He just like, does it in passing, and then doesn’t say anything. And so it makes me think that those have to be conscious choices, you know, to not let us in to those kind of, you know, gory, made me scenes.

Traci Thomas 12:00
I wonder also, because like, there’s a part I can’t remember, it’s later in the book, where he’s like, there’s certain words that I chose not to use in this book. And to me, I mean, the one that popped into my mind is he doesn’t use disabled, it’s not in the book at all. And I thought that was really an interesting choice, especially because I follow you on social media, and no surprise, and you recently, I think, yesterday had a thing that was like, disabled is not a bad word. And I thought that I found his choice not to use the word and I have to assume that even in the translation, that’s such a choice. Yeah. That like, it made me think about, you know, what he talks about, and what we were just saying is like, they internalized ableism. And like, he talks a lot about it actually about like the weakness and the disgust for his own weakness and weakness and other people. And I just the not using the word I noticed it early. Because, you know, I’ll be really open when I when I read books, I’m thinking about how are we going to talk about on the show, and I was waiting for him to self identify, because I wasn’t sure. You know what he would say? And I think that it’s fair to say that he is disabled, whether or not he would necessarily identify as that, and especially because he later sort of validates that assumption by saying I’m choosing not to use this word. So I don’t know if you had thoughts about that.

Tessa Miller 13:17
Yeah, he uses wheelchair user wheelchair over and over and over again. And I guess that’s how he identifies himself. But yeah, he doesn’t use disabled and I wonder, again, like, I don’t know if that’s, I don’t know, if it’s a it’s a translation thing? I don’t think that it is,

Traci Thomas 13:40
I think that would be Yeah, I think that’d be a bold choice by the translator.

Tessa Miller 13:46
I wonder like, I mean, he talks about this a little bit in the book, sort of like the culture around disability in his home country. And, like, people are just now I feel like, at least in the States, which you know, is where I’m based, and is the frame of reference for all of my disability work. Disabled is just now kind of becoming a thing that people, especially non disabled people are comfortable saying, and I think that social media has a big part of that, like, you know, people sharing and self identifying and the community really being able to say, No, this is the language that we prefer. And this is something that I noticed in the book is that it seems like his community is all non disabled. Yes. Like he doesn’t seem to have a disabled community. At least he doesn’t reference one in this book.

Traci Thomas 14:50
And he talks about a little bit about not wanting to be he wants to distance himself from all of my friends and all the people around me are not just eight bald, then I am not a disabled person or whatever because I’m not surrounded by right.

Tessa Miller 15:06
And he talks about like the camera to a key. Yeah, he went to a camp for

Traci Thomas 15:11
I got really mad at that part when he was like, I don’t belong here. I was like, You know what you do? You do?

Tessa Miller 15:18
He has a he has like a childhood girlfriend at this camp and then just kind of like a boast, sir.

Traci Thomas 15:28
Yeah. Like Yan My God, toxic masculinity.

Tessa Miller 15:32
Yeah, because he doesn’t want to have a disabled girlfriend.

Traci Thomas 15:36
And she also but she, he chose a disabled girlfriend who is not a wheelchair user, right? Like, because he talks about like, the hierarchy.

Tessa Miller 15:45
Yeah, she’s at like, the top of this hierarchy even higher. And I thought that there would be some reflection on that, like later in the book. Like, as he grew up, maybe he, you know, found a community of disabled people, but it really seems like he has very much tried to distance himself from any kind of community, which is, like, it’s just alien to me, because that is so vital to my survival as a disabled person in America especially. And it’s something that I tell chronically ill people like when they you know, if they reach out to me, or email me or whatever, like, always talking about, like, how you can find community and the disabled community is such a just rich community of people. And I rely on them so much for so many things. And so to read a book from someone who that’s just completely absent, from this text was like, a little bit of a shock to me, and also, like, makes me a little bit sad for him. Because I there’s like, there’s a quote about like, commute, survival as a community event. But I think about that all the time. Because like, that is so true. And I think we’ve seen that especially during the pandemic, like with mutual aid groups, and like the disabled community really becoming vocal for one another. And yeah, just seemed a little. I mean, I don’t think he’s a lonely guy. Like, it seems like he loves his family and finds a lot of fulfillment in like his academic work, but it just made me feel kind of lonely reading it.

Traci Thomas 17:36
yeah. No, that makes that makes sense. Okay, wait, I have to ask you this about you. So in your book you in like the introduction, I believe you say that you’re chronically ill, but you’re not disabled. But just now you did identify as disabled? Is that something that you sort of go back and forth on? Or is that just something like language wise? That is like they get conflated?

Tessa Miller 17:57
I don’t know if I did I say that I’m chronically ill, but not disabled? Or did I say some people identify?

Traci Thomas 18:02
maybe that’s what you said, I can’t remember. I just thought that I remembered you saying that. But I could be putting words in your mouth. So you tell me.

Tessa Miller 18:12
You haven’t revisited the book, because I just needed a little space from it. So honestly, I don’t remember what the language says. But I use them sort of interchangeably. For my own identification. When I first got sick, I used chronically ill pretty exclusively because I think I had this idea, which is something that a lot of people, I think, think is that, like, if you’re disabled, you have to be in a wheelchair or you have to be using a mobility aid, or it has to be this very visible disability, which is not true at all. But you know, these are beliefs that exists even within the disabled community. Right. I think that disabled has become more popular within the wider community.

Traci Thomas 19:03
Wider. Wi D Er, yes. Okay. Sorry. I was wondering, I wasn’t sure. Well, I don’t know. Sometimes the white community be doing things different than other people. So I wasn’t sure if you were saying like white disabled people or something. Okay. And the why, really?

Tessa Miller 19:21
I think that yeah, no, no, I think that it’s become more popular as sort of a self identifier because of that sense of community. And I think that there used to be this kind of weird dividing line between, like, chronically ill and disabled, but like legally, under, you know, sort of the umbrella of the Americans with Disabilities Act, like chronically ill people now are disabled. Right. And I think that a lot of people, especially during COVID, like I’ve started being more comfortable identifying and sort of as like, I don’t know, pride or resistance or whatever, to the forces of ableism that are so strong during the pandemic, to call themselves disabled sometimes for the first time, but I know a lot of people like who are chronically ill who won’t call themselves disabled, which is fine. I don’t think that there’s there should be any pressure to call yourself something that you’re not comfortable calling yourself. And then there are also people who like, their, their status of disability sometimes changes, like, you know, sometimes they do need to use mobility aids, and sometimes they don’t. And so they may call themselves disabled sometimes, and then not other times, which is like, kind of under this umbrella of dynamic disability. Got it? So yeah, but I think the takeaway though, is that it’s just like not a it’s not a dirty word. It’s not offensive to call someone who’s disabled disabled, like, it’s much more offensive to call someone like differently abled or special needs or any of these infantilizing euphemisms again, that non disabled people like for their own comfort when talking about disabled people. So yeah, to not see that term in a book that I think publishers and readers would label as a disability memoir. It’s an interesting choice that I would like to ask him about.

Traci Thomas 21:29
I also, I don’t know that you will have an answer for this, because I know this is also sort of a different but tangentially related community. As far as folks who are terminally ill. How does that do you know how that sort of intersects with the chronically ill and the disabled, because I know, obviously, certain terminal illnesses could render someone disabled. And at a certain point, obviously, terminal illnesses lead to death for people who aren’t familiar with the difference, whereas chronic illness is something that you live with, for an undetermined amount of time. Some people have chronic illness for the rest of their life, some people have are able to be cured from their chronic illness or change their lifestyle so that they don’t have flare ups are some combination of those things, which

Tessa Miller 22:09
is why the title of my book is what it is. Yes, yeah, to distinguish it is like a, you know, kind of chronic illness, literally, it doesn’t kill you. By definition. Yeah, by definition versus terminal illness. Well, and sometimes, you know, like, especially people with certain cancers, like when they get diagnosed, there’s the potential of being terminal, right, but then maybe they go into remission, and then it technically becomes chronic, because there is the chance of the cancer coming back or coming back in a different place, or whatever. And also a lot of people after they’ve had cancer deal with chronic health issues, or disabilities after cancer treatment, and that kind of thing. So yeah, I think about that kind of distinction a lot and how it’s just like, it’s just super murky, and it changes all the time to you know, like, depending on, like, especially with cancers, a lot of a lot of cancer. Survivors are in like, you know, the chronic illness community. And that’s either because they live with chronic issues now, or like I said, there’s the chance of recurrence. And, yeah, there’s a lot of like, language that tries to define things that I feel like can’t be super defined. And I just like, whoever wants to be in whatever right section of this community, like, you know, like, I wouldn’t feel like it was appropriate for me to be in a support group for people with terminal illnesses, for example, because my experience is different than that. And I wouldn’t want to be in a space that wasn’t for me.

Traci Thomas 24:04
Sort of like a theater. It’s like, there’s general admission and you can come be there. But like, there’s also the balcony we have assigned seating, but you can change your seat and it’s a very chill theater.

Tessa Miller 24:14
Yeah, exactly.

Traci Thomas 24:16
There’s space for everyone. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. For me.

Tessa Miller 24:19
I don’t know if I did clarify it because honestly, it’s something that isn’t 100% Clear.

Traci Thomas 24:26
Well, I think that was clarifying though, just like knowing that it’s a little bit more fluid than like these distinct categories.

Tessa Miller 24:34
It’s definitely more fluid. And I think that like, again, social media and the ability for disabled and chronically ill and terminally ill people to connect all in this one interweb space, has sort of, you know, definitely shifted the boundaries of what all of that stuff means to.

Traci Thomas 24:53
One of the things that both you and Yan talk about in your book, and also I think is like pivotal and a lot of cancer memoirs that I’ve read, and other books by disabled authors, is this diagnosis, the moment of diagnosis in both of your cases, you had incorrect diagnoses. You have a few. He talks about sort of one one, right one. Yeah. And he talks about when his diagnosed when he was his father called him to be like, it’s not, it’s not the thing that we thought it was because you don’t have the genetic marker. So in his case, the muscular atrophy, the spinal muscular atrophy, it’s a genetic disorder.

Tessa Miller 25:43
And so progressive it sounds like from its progressive, he wrote about it.

Traci Thomas 25:47
And so now like my husband, who is an OB GYN, he actually I asked him about it, when I got to the diagnosis. Also, he doesn’t mention the name of the diagnosis until page 72, which I thought was I was like, what page Am I on until page 72. And then we find out, you know, 20 pages later that that’s no longer his diagnosis. But I asked my husband about it, and now there’s a genetic marker for it. So when you get genetic tested, you can find out if you have a propensity for that. So a lot of I and he talks about that, like there’s what does he say something about the mutation in the embryonic stages, or something like that. And so I found it really interesting, because then He grieves he like says, he starts sobbing, when you find out that this thing that he thought was the thing that he had for his whole life is not the thing. Yeah. And I know, in your book, you talk about being misdiagnosed a bunch in the beginning.

Tessa Miller 26:41
That was one part of this book, where I saw like a thread, in my own experience, and something that I see, people have talked to me about their own experience with diagnosis many times in my work or support groups, or wherever. And it seems like he, he had this combination of like, grief, because he had identified with this thing for so long. And also, I think, because the thing that they thought he had was progressive, I think that was kind of a big part of it was like, he was always expecting it to get worse, somewhere down the road. And he makes this point of like, but like, I really wasn’t getting worse, like, you know, I had another five years and another five years, another five years, and like I was nothing was changing. But he did definitely, you know, build his identity around this diagnosis. I mean, how could you not he lived with it for 30 years? And then I think it was this mixture of grief. And were I related to it was he also had relief that came with it. And maybe that relief for him was because it was no longer this progressive thing. Like now he knew that. That wasn’t his fate, necessarily. And for me, it was just like, when I got properly diagnosed, I think I mentioned this in the book. Like, I think that people who are not chronically ill, or disabled think that diagnosis is this really scary thing that happens. But most of the time, it’s kind of a gift, because you can finally get treatment, and especially for people who have just gone through rounds and rounds of doctors, and I see this a lot with, especially people who have endometriosis, because it is particularly difficult to diagnose, and especially male doctors often will tell people with certain set of reproductive organs that like, you know, it’s all in their head, or maybe they just have bad periods or whatever, right? That it’s very, it’s reassuring that your experience and your body like has been validated, you know that you’re not, you’re not crazy, you haven’t been just imagining this pain that you’ve been living with. So getting a diagnosis is also you know, necessary, like when it’s in your paperwork for your health insurance. I don’t know how it works anywhere else outside of the states, but you know, insurance is going to they’re not going to cover stuff unless you have this diagnosis written in your in your history. So a lot of people like they know they have endometriosis, for example, for years and years and years, and then they can’t get medication covered for it because like no one no doctors have said that they actually have it. So there is a there’s a freedom. I think there’s a sense of control. Maybe that comes back with a diagnosis because often without that you feel totally out of control, like just the not knowing. And I think having language for things and having a name or something can be empowering in a way. Yeah. So that was my That was my experience, at least,

Traci Thomas 30:01
when you got your earlier diagnoses that were not accurate. Did you know that they weren’t right? Like, could you? Did you feel like this doesn’t sound like what I’m feeling? Or did you think that you had an answer?

Tessa Miller 30:15
I definitely had a feeling like it wasn’t right, because so there are two, basically two main forms of IBD, which I write about in the book, there’s ulcerative colitis. And there’s Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis is really contained to your large intestine. And Crohn’s disease affects your entire digestive system. And I was having symptoms outside of my colon, like I was getting, you know, sores in my mouth and pain higher up in my abdomen than just very low, which is where your large intestine is. And, yeah, I just had kind of a feeling that it wasn’t the right diagnosis. And also like the medication that they were giving me, which was more specific to ulcerative colitis, wasn’t really working that well, like I was still just constantly in a cycle of flare ups. So I think I don’t remember exactly how I wrote it in the book. But like, the symptoms that I was having not matching up with that diagnosis was much scarier for me than finally getting one that was like, oh, okay, this actually makes sense. And then just start a medication, you know, which is still what I’m on now, that actually works. Yeah. Versus like, just like, you know, throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick

Traci Thomas 31:29
and how ignorant to all of this stuff. Were you like, when you got your when you started to have your symptoms and started to get sick? Were you like, Okay, I’m gonna do my research. And I could be ulcerative colitis, or could be Crohn’s, or did you go in and they were like, it’s ulcerative colitis? And you’re like, Okay, great. And then you’re like, This isn’t working. And then you were waiting? Or were you sitting there waiting, being like, can someone just say fucking Crohn’s? So I can get some drugs? Yeah, yeah,

Tessa Miller 31:53
no, I was pretty ignorant to all of it. And I think about this sometimes, like before, I think it was maybe two years before I got diagnosed with IBD. One of my friends who I grew up with, her younger sister got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. And I remember when she told us that, like, her sister had been diagnosed with you see, I just was like, okay, like, what? I don’t know what that means, like, right? You know, I didn’t, I had no real rough frame of reference for that. And, yeah, so I was very ignorant before I was diagnosed. And then it was, I was much more of a passive patient when I first got diagnosed to, whereas now I’m just like, you know, I feel like a professional. But I was, I was very passive in how I approach doctors and the whole health care industry, because I thought that, you know, they always knew best, and I wasn’t supposed to question that I didn’t know how to, you know, be more assertive in my role as a patient. And so like you said, it was a lot of just like, Can someone please write, like, I had read so much about IBD, after I was diagnosed, that I definitely had a feeling, but I also like, I didn’t want to be like that Google patient who comes in and is like, you know, webmd says that I have, because I wanted them to still take me seriously. It’s this very delicate, like, you know, like balance of how you approach your doctors. And it’s not something that you’re instantly good at, at all. So, yeah, it was a lot of waiting around being like, somebody give me some medication that actually works here, please.

Traci Thomas 33:48
I feel like part of what you’re talking about a little bit. And what he talks about in the book is, when he talks, he talks about this with his wheelchair, where he’s like, for everyone who doesn’t have a wheelchair, it’s just a wheelchair. But for people who are wheelchair users, you know, there’s all these different versions, and he compares it to little kids, who, every time they see a four legged animal, they say woof, until they recognize the different animals. But then if you go back and ask them, once they know the different animals, what each thing is, they won’t be able to tell you, which was a woof and which was you know, and like. And that’s how he compares his understanding of wheelchairs. Like before, he knew a lot about wheelchairs, it was just a wheelchair. And now it’s like he can tell every different little bit and I thought that was really interesting, because it’s sort of that like, we don’t know what we don’t know. Yeah, and we only understand things that we’ve like spent time trying to understand and it sort of sounds like that’s what you’re saying with IBM.

Tessa Miller 34:45
Well, and with this book, too, like, like I said, I’m not a wheelchair user. So this is and I think he makes he makes a point in there somewhere. I remember highlighting to about that movie the sessions. Did you ever see it? I think I saw it years ago, but I don’t really remember it about a guy who had polio as a child.

Traci Thomas 35:08
the guy he talks about Brian or something.

Tessa Miller 35:12
I think that’s his thing. Yeah. And he hires a sexual surrogate. And he talks about how, you know, that movie was nominated for Oscars and kind of presented as this universal experience. And he’s like, like, I’m also disabled, but like, I don’t have the same experience, right, as Mark O’Brien like, and I thought that was a nice point about, you know, sometimes I think that there is power in the, in the collective disabled. And also, sometimes I think that like, you know, the nuance and stuff gets lost of people’s very individual experiences. And even people who have the same diagnosis can have two completely different experiences.

Traci Thomas 35:59
Well, we see that a lot like not to conflate these things. But I know, you know, in the history of the Asian American, like rights movement, that there was this push to unify Asian countries so that they could have like power, right? And it also becomes this thing. It’s like, okay, but a person from Manila is going to have a really different experience than a person from Japan than a person from Sri Lanka and apart, you know, and like, within all of those countries, and all of those places, like there are super different experiences and hierarchies and colorism and class things. And it’s like, sure, we are all Asian American, but like, that is not the same. And I think I mean, I talked about intersectionality earlier, and I know that you know, ability, different disabilities and illnesses and things are not the same as race, obviously. But I’ve kept thinking about a lot of the things he was talking about, like talking about stigma, the collective and the community, and talking about, you know, access and all this stuff. And I kept thinking about all the ways that that race is sort of similar ly experienced by individuals who are as he says, quote, unquote, marked, right, like, he’s like talks about stigma, you have to have a physical marking of the stigma. And I thought that was really you could

Tessa Miller 37:17
compare it to the section of the hierarchy to when you’re talking about colorism and all of that kind of stuff like that is such a, like, such a mirror to race to, I think that you can definitely make that comparison. And like, there are overlapping identities to like, you know, a black person’s a black disabled person’s experience is going to be different than mine.

Traci Thomas 37:44
Well, right. That’s what made me think about intersectionality is I was like, this reminds me so much of race. And then I was like, Man, there are black disabled people. Ya know, like, I keep because like, so thing from Yes. So missing from the book.

Tessa Miller 37:57
I don’t think that I can just like, you’re like, Oh, he’s Norwegian. Like, I can just forgive this as like an oversight.

Traci Thomas 38:05
No, no, no, of his Absolutely not.

Tessa Miller 38:08
Yeah, it’s like, I feel like, if White disabled writers are writing about disability, and they’re not talking about race, and gender and class, then you’re not doing your job. As someone who’s writing about this stuff, like it just it’s oversight isn’t even the right word. Like it’s like, I don’t have the, like neglectful. Yeah, it’s neglect. That’s that. No, that’s what it is. Oversight makes it seem like a passive mistake. Right? But like, he doesn’t know better, right? Yeah. But neglect is like an active thing. It’s an active choice. And yeah, I just like, I don’t have a lot of empathy for those choices in publish texts.

Traci Thomas 39:02
So it was it was so glaring that it made me the person who you know, come to came to the book to like, learn or, like, be like, this is missing, and like I shouldn’t I, when I have that experience, when I’m reading a book, and I have an experience of like this, there’s a glaring omission. It is very uncomfortable for me to continue reading like Wow, it’s really really hard, especially in a case like a book like this where I really don’t know that much. But I know enough to know that you’ve got to talk and he likes sort of thinly mentioned like, and I was lucky or like an I am at this place in the hierarchy or whatever. But I’m like, listen, Yan, what you spent time in California, you know, like you can’t just blame. You can’t just blame it on Norway. I know that Norway is super fucking white, but you also had so like his family was so involved, and I don’t care if you’re white, black, whatever, to have a fan Only that was so involved in advocating for him from such a young age, that alone is something that he should have talked about in relationship to other people who don’t have that. That’s a huge thing. From everything I’ve read about disability, chronic illness, access to health care, the incarceration, like all of these things, having a family who supports you and fights for you through with institutions. Yeah, that’s the difference between having a custom wheelchair right, like, that’s the difference from having the shoes. That’s the difference from not having to go to a school only for disabled children. All that doesn’t just happen. I don’t care where you are.

Tessa Miller 40:38
The choice of the word lucky, is a ratio. It’s dismissive, right? Yeah. Because it’s like, not only do you have socialized medicine, which, you know, is an absolute game changer. But like you said, you have your family, like he’s talking about these boxes and boxes of paperwork from his childhood that his parents gave him about how like they would put in requests, and then they would appeal and they would spend just endless hours, you know, trying to get him what he needed. Yeah, it’s it’s presented in this book without any context, or reflection, really on how that could have been completely different. And I think again, that kind of goes back to this, missing the community that’s missing in this book. And like, you know, like, when you’re when you’re in community, you see those, like, like I said, there’s the umbrella of disability and chronic illness, but then there’s these very different experiences that people have. And one of those is people who have had advocates. He has these advocates who spent a lot of time and hours and just from birth for him. And yeah, there’s not, there’s not really any reflection there of like, this. This is this is not the typical case of like, how this goes for,

Traci Thomas 42:11
for if it is or if it is in Norway, then you

Tessa Miller 42:17
have Yeah, I felt like I didn’t have any comparison to other disabled people in Norway. Or like, is, does everybody get a custom wheelchair? Like, wow, that’s, you know, that’s amazing. Or like, Are there still these, you know, divides by class, especially, like, it seems, like kind of like, dances around, but never really talks about? Yeah.

Traci Thomas 42:42
I think what’s interesting what you’re saying about community, which I’d never really thought about it, but sort of what I’m hearing from you and thinking about my own relationship to the people that I’m community, like other black women that I’m in community with, is that having community not only gives you a place to like, vent, or to learn about, you know, what’s going on, is it normal that this is happening? Have you experienced this, whatever, but it also gives you perspective, and gives you a chance to see your own privilege, right to see, I don’t have this symptom. I’m so I’m so grateful. Like, I’m really lucky, I’m able, I’m a wheelchair user who is able to walk, like that’s a great

Tessa Miller 43:20
thing, right? One people and community to like, especially if you’re really honest with each other, and you know, you have Yeah, just the honesty and communication with one another is like, they’ll often tell you if you’re totally off base, which I think is something that’s really important. Yeah. And there were definitely some moments in this book where I was kinda like, did any other disabled people, like, give you any feedback on this? Was there any conversation about like, I’m not saying that you need to have other readers of your work. Like I know, some authors work very closely with just like their editor and themselves. And that’s pretty much it. But I did feel like there were some moments in this book where like, he could have opened up discussion with other disabled people and probably come away with more perspective, like you’re saying, he only mentions a mentioned privilege, I think, once in this book, and he says, like, privilege can exist with vulnerability, which like, Yeah, it’s true, but like, I wanted more self awareness about that I guess.

Traci Thomas 44:33
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that he talked about that really just stuck in my mind, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think about disability again, without thinking about this was and I know this isn’t everyone’s experience, but when he talked about how he cannot hurry, hmm, that I mean, I and he, how he has to plan and like I am definitely a planner, but that’s just a personality trait. It’s not out of necessity, but thinking about all the times that I’m like, oh, You don’t have to hurry. Oh crap. Like, I don’t have time for this or whatever I like thinking about the ways that time changes for people at when they are sick versus when they’re healthy or when they are disabled versus when they are able bodied. Like, I just that really stuck with me. And then his experience is traveling and the in the wheelchair and

Tessa Miller 45:21
he says he says being being, like treated like cargo.

Traci Thomas 45:26
Yes. Something like that. Yeah. Well, it reminded me of the recent death of an gratiae figure, Rolla, the woman who had her chair, her wheelchair broken by United Airlines. And then she got bedsores. Yeah. And she ended up dying a few months later. And, you know, obviously, there’s a legal situation. So I allegedly, it was because of the chair breaking, I’m only saying allegedly in case someone who cares listens, but, but it just made me think about, you know, the thing as a person who is not disabled that I kept thinking about, which, you know, of course, it’s through my own lens, is all the ways that I don’t have to worry about these things.

Tessa Miller 46:06
I felt the same way that retracing, like, my experience as a non wheelchair user. And as someone who like I have to, I do have to plan, especially like, I have to plan for the unexpected, you know, if symptoms come up, whatever. And if, if my disease is active, like obviously, I have to know where bathrooms are, and that kind of stuff, but like, I don’t have to, I don’t have to play I mean, the way that he talks about planning, it’s like every is planned for and that is a freedom that I have. I don’t have to I have to plan but I don’t have to, you know, like, I can still if if like I need a bathroom, I can still run down the stairs to one or whatever. Like, you know, you can still hurry. Yeah, I can still hurry and and often have to hurry and you know, able to do that.

Traci Thomas 47:04
I just never thought about hurting as a privilege at all right? Like I just it’s like to me it’s such a it’s such a pain. When I’m in a place where I have to hurry. I’m like, oh my god, I’m so frazzled. I’m so yeah. And now I’m like, Wow, I’m so lucky to be in a situation where if I need to speed things up, I can.

Tessa Miller 47:22
Well, you also in that in that same sort of section of the book, too. He talked about when I don’t know if it was the first time he traveled with his now wife, or if it was just one time where they were traveling, when like things just did not really go as planned. And I think that’s when he talks about like, kind of being treated as cargo by the airline. But like, he was sort of like used to that experience at that point in his life. He was in his 30s by then right? He was like

Traci Thomas 47:49
resigned to right

Tessa Miller 47:50
but his wife was just like, incensed by the whole thing. And he, you know, talked a little bit about how like, rage, like, is just something that he can’t really afford to feel all the time anymore, because like it’ll make him sick basically

Traci Thomas 48:12
reminded me of racism too. I was like, I can relate to this as a man like, yeah, like when people when people are like, Oh, that was racist? I’m like, yeah, yeah, no, of course. But like, I can’t I don’t have that energy.

Tessa Miller 48:23
Do you people send you like, news articles and stuff, wanting you to get like outraged about it.

Traci Thomas 48:32
They want to know my opinion. They’re like, what do you think about? Question mark? Yeah. And I’m like that a lot. Yeah. And I’m also like, I’ve obviously already seen this thing. You know, I had to put up boundaries on my Instagram for the stacks, because people were just driving me crazy. And now when people send them, I’m like, will you please look at my boundaries, stories or whatever.

Tessa Miller 48:54
I had to put a thing on my website, like the email form, to be like, please don’t send me like diets. Please don’t send like pseudo science like, I couldn’t. And people still sometimes bypass that and send me stuff, which at this point, I just ignore. But I did go through a phase like right after the book came out where I just like, wanted to reply to everyone who would like me shit like that.

Traci Thomas 49:21
When I first started, yeah, because in the beginning, I didn’t have that many listeners. And so I was trying to engage and like build this community. Yeah. And then what happened was that George Floyd was murdered, and I got like, 15,000 followers in like, a month, and then all of a sudden they’re

Tessa Miller 49:37
here antiracism booklists.

Traci Thomas 49:42
Because yeah, because I did one really early like I was one of the first people and so then all these people came in started following and then, you know, I did an episode on white fragility with the lady gang and so I just got an influx of white followers who were coming to like quote, unquote, learn but also Due to listening

Tessa Miller 50:00
and learning, they were showing me how smart they were.

Traci Thomas 50:03
And so I was still had this like mentality of like, oh, this is a community of readers and people who are curious and interested like I am. And I realized not quickly enough that it wasn’t in as good of faith as I had thought it wasn’t as I was engaging with it. And so then I started just like double hurting things. But I actually now gone to the point where I just ignore things. Like for example, actually, yesterday, I sent a bitchy response. I was so proud of myself. It was dumb. It was dumb. But my brother, like I posted this thing. And then my brother commented, sent me a DM,

Tessa Miller 50:38
Juliette Lewis. And my brother was like, I do not do that. Because I have

Traci Thomas 50:45
my answers. Christina Ricci, the two I wrote it for 1,000%. But my brother sent me a message that was like, I don’t know who either of these people are. And then this person sent me a dissertation about all the things that Juliette Lewis had been in, and then also wrote, and it looks like your brother doesn’t know the difference between who and whom. So then I wrote back because there’s my brother,

Tessa Miller 51:05
my brother is not allowed to like, yes, roast your brother is use me,

Traci Thomas 51:10
but also like, clearly, it’s a joke. He’s like, who moved? I don’t know whom either these women are. Yeah, but also like, this is my brother. So I wrote back, I guess they don’t teach humor in the grammar police, which I thought was very good. No, no. All right, I think I might have blocked them right after anyways, I just was like, the way to do it. I just I am getting to the point between the pandemic and the racism and all the things where I’m just like, I have to be nice. I think people think that I’m nice, because I am, like, interested in books. And so I think that people assume that means that like, you’re like a nice quiet librarian type. But I’m really not. I’m actually like, kind of an asshole. And so now I’ve just, I’m gonna lean into it a little more, because I’m tired of it

Tessa Miller 51:52
And also, like you said, at this point in, during the entire masters wildly, like, also, there’s, I think that people still don’t understand that there’s like, a big difference between being nice and being kind. Like, I think that I’m a kind person, but like, you send me like, some shitty message about how, like, vaccines made me sick. I’m not gonna be nice, like, and also I’ve gotten to the point where I ignore most of that stuff now, but especially when the book first came out, and I was just starting to get like, reader emails about it. Right, right. I would still, like apply to everything. And I just, I can’t do it anymore. Because yeah, like you said it just like, it. It. It hurts you more than like, you know, and also like, who, who has the time, I was thinking about that with the person who sent you some like dissertation about Juliette Lewis, like who has that. And also, like, the other weird thing that happens, and I’m sure that this has happened to you, too, is that people, like, they read the book and for you, like they listen to the podcast, and then they get really familiar with you where they think that they can speak to you in a certain way. When sometimes I just want to read sometimes I just want to write back. We’re strangers. Yeah. Take a deep breath.

Traci Thomas 53:23
Yeah, no, I have I got all of it. And I think also a lot of it just like being in someone’s ear. They think that, like, they know me, I hear that all the time. Like, oh, like, I’ll write something was like, Oh, I read that in your voice. Like they can they hear me. And so they think that they know me, because they you know, it’s like very intimate. And I feel that way about a lot of podcast hosts that I love. You know, like, I’ve had a few on this show. And I’m literally like, oh my god, it’s you my friend. And then I’m like, I don’t know you. I don’t know you. I don’t know you can but I don’t know you. Right. So I get very sympathetic simultaneously.

Tessa Miller 53:58
Great. And yeah, also can get weird.

Traci Thomas 54:02
Like, yeah, because it’s such an honor. You know, like, it’s it’s such an honor that people listen and are interested in what I have to say and like, come back week after week and all of that. But sometimes I’m like, also, I have boundaries, and I’m a human being and I don’t know you. Yeah. And you’re coming at me in a way that I’m very uncomfortable with and like, or I just don’t think it’s funny. I don’t think it’s funny for you to grammar police, my brother, like, it’s so funny. Get out of my DMs at like 10 o’clock on a Saturday, like, okay, we’re again running out of time, which is always my problem with the show. It’s mine too. I mean, you know, it’s unfortunate, but I sort of talked about this, but he talks about, like, the aim of the book is making space, he wanted to like make space and he talks about like his dream for the world. And it’s like that wide streets and like accessible buildings and all of these things. And he can move around freely in this world. And you know, he can, he can hurry he can do whatever. And I had two thoughts about sort of the aim of the book and then this dream emerald and one of them. And he talks about having deep grief that this world doesn’t exist for him. And like one of the things that really hit me about that was like this Rob kind of does exist for me in this sense, like, not talking about the ways that I’m hindered to move in the world, but like physically, the world that he dreams of like, I don’t ever feel like the streets too narrow. I don’t ever have I don’t you know, I’m like, and there’s an episode of The Ezra Klein show where Tressie McMillan cottom is on. And they talked about how, like, at some point, all of us will become disabled at some point in our lives, right? Like, we’re chronically ill, or terminally ill or one of or one of the things under this, you know, larger umbrella. And it just depends on when it happens to you.

Tessa Miller 55:43
Yeah, for most people, it’s going to come with aging,

Traci Thomas 55:47
right, you know, aging or with an accident or something down the line.

Tessa Miller 55:50
Now, what’s COVID? Like the main, you know, a big disabler at this point in history?

Traci Thomas 55:57
But I just kept thinking like, wow, his dream is like something that I get to live in. And it made me feel obviously extremely grateful. I’m guilty, too, because we all have shows us

Tessa Miller 56:07
feelings should always coexist.

Traci Thomas 56:09
I think so balance,

I think that I think you’re right. But then the thing about making space in this book, that was really like, irked me, because I just feel like he might have made space for his story, but I don’t think he made space broadly. Yeah, I don’t, I didn’t think about this book in relationship to the experiences of other disabled people because of him. I thought about it sort of in spite of what he had written. Yeah. And it was a little like, it was frustrating, but it also sort of made him human in a sense, where I’m like, seeing you too, are narrow minded, just like me.

Tessa Miller 56:41
Yeah. I, I was having this conversation with a friend like a couple months ago, and we were talking about Madison cough form that terrible representative from North Carolina. I don’t know. But it looks like a Hitler youth. And he’s in a wheelchair because he was in an accident as a teenager. But he’s, you know, a Trumpist he’s far right. He’s, he’s just not a good person. And we were actually talking about how, like, it’s kind of important for people to see that disabled people can still be bad people. Yeah, you know, and I don’t think that I’m not equating Madison Cawthorn with young GRU, because I don’t think that younger was a bad person. But I think that like what you said about it kind of humanizes him in a way because like, there are definitely some, some unskillful were kind of selfish, you know, sentiments within this, which, you know, I think is is is important.

Traci Thomas 57:45
It is when we have we all have it, we all have

Tessa Miller 57:48
them. Yeah. And I think that sometimes disabled people get

Traci Thomas 57:51
like, like Angel treatment.

Tessa Miller 57:55
Yeah, it’s either infantilizing or like same thing. Like these on unblemished people, and we’re inspiring and especially I think for people who are in wheelchairs

Traci Thomas 58:05
get oh my gosh, they’re the most inspiring people.

Tessa Miller 58:08
so inspiring. And, and some are

Traci Thomas 58:13
yeah, some are not like some are just like, you can, you know, regular regular, like the rest of us and you

Tessa Miller 58:18
can be inspiring, and also like kind of an asshole sometimes to like, all of these dualities exists in all of us, and like, disabled people aren’t any different. So I do think that that is an important point to make. And sometimes,

Traci Thomas 58:31
like, in the bad guys, like also, like Dan Crenshaw, who has, you know, his eyepatch, and he has the vision, vision impairment. Same thing, it’s like, sometimes, you know, you can be an inspiration and be a horrible person. You know, like, I’m sure that there are people who are inspired by Dan Crenshaw, because he was like, in the military or whatever, honorable value value that type of service and he was injured in the military, I’m pretty sure but I’m gonna make, but also he’s a horrible homophobic, transphobic racist piece of shit. Yeah. But, you know, that kind of representation matters, too. Like, I think it all matters, you know, there’s Candace Owens, she’s not making black woman look good to me. But like, we need her to, you know, and like, I think as an exercise, as an exercise that I try to practice, you know, is like, how can we love everybody? And I don’t mean love and like, love, like, I love everybody because like, I don’t believe in that. But like, how can we practice like love and humility when we come to people who are who we think are wrong or bad or evil or vile, and still, you know, love them for being part of our community or whatever that looks like. It’s a it’s an impossible thing for me to do up to this point in my life, but it’s something that I aspire towards. But again, it doesn’t make me like Candace Owens at all and not horrible names behind her back, but it is something that I’m like, okay, okay, okay, but also, as a thought exercise is Yeah, we talked a lot about the title actually, earlier in the book, I don’t know if you had any thoughts about the cover, but just the last thing I think you have do you have the blue, it looks like that. Yeah, and the red, it’s like blue with like red lines that are sort of in chunks, but then they don’t fully connect, they just connect at the corners sort of disjointed a little bit. And it’s sort of like a swivel shape. And it’s a dark blue with like, these red, orange. And then the writing is in white, for people who have not seen the book slash are listening to a podcast describing not my strongest skill set.

Tessa Miller 1:00:31
Um, I didn’t have like a visceral reaction to it, like I do with some book covers, like we were talking about becoming abolitionists earlier. Like, I’d had such a response to that image. Yeah, I thought it’s maybe kind of, it could be a metaphor for, like, the shapes of bodies, you know, because he talks a sign of about, like, the form that his body takes, and you know, how, like, his ankles are crooked. And I think he describes like, his spine being bent and that kind of thing. But it could also be, you know, kind of a visual representation of in accessible spaces, like because the lines have the brakes in them, like you can only you can get like so far. Yeah. And then like the road runs out if we’re thinking of this as like, you know, a road or a sidewalk or whatever. But what did you think about it?

Traci Thomas 1:01:26
I do think that it did much for me, either, I think I should have said this earlier. So we picked this book for a very I picked this book for Tessa sent me a bunch of books. And I specifically picked this book for a few reasons, one of which was because the author was a man. And we’ve done so many women’s books on this show. And one of the things that I always wanted to do on the show was to make sure we read all sorts of different kinds of books. And in 2021, we only read two books by men. Which, you know, I don’t I’m not saying that. I think it’s fine. Like I’m not saying that men are, you know, but I also wanted to be cognizant of that, like, that’s something that I think about, and I also was interested in, you know, reading an author, a book that was translated and an author who’s not from America and all of that stuff. That being said, I felt like this cover is like so purposefully. Sort of like what’s in the book, I like purposely hold you at a distance, you don’t get a sense of like, what’s what’s coming what this means I live a life like yours, it could literally be about anything, we just all we know is that perhaps in some way, this person is different than whoever the yours is to the author, but like there is really it just says a memoir, you know, there’s no subtitle there’s no a life with, you know, a life behind the diagnosis. There’s not there’s nothing.

Tessa Miller 1:02:42
I looked up the original cover to like, I think it was published in hardback. And it’s it’s just white, white text on a black. Interesting. Yeah, I was wondering if maybe it was, yes, different changes. I noticed in his, like, in his author photo, too.

Traci Thomas 1:02:59
You can’t see the wheelchair anything, right? Yeah, no, I looked him up. It’s, there’s clearly a, not clearly but it feels like to me, there’s a sense from him that like he does not want to be defined by his wheelchair use or, or by his disability in any way. And that like being like, everyone else seems to be very important to him, based on what we’ve read, and like the pictures, like if you google him, there’s very few pictures of him in the wheelchair. There’s a few with him, like standing near it, like giving some sort of a speech or something it looks like but and I just, it’s just a really interesting, like, I’m actually really glad we did this book, because it’s sort of a different perspective on disability than I think, than I think I was anticipating it

Tessa Miller 1:03:46
It was for me too, and I think for for your readers, as well.

Traci Thomas 1:03:51
And I do think it fits very nicely with your book, just because your book is so intimate, and like you really do let us in. And I think that it’s interesting to like, read it and compare like as like a comparative lit moment of like these two people who are under the same umbrella, you know, and obviously, your diagnoses are very different. There’s so much difference, but just the way that you write about it,

Tessa Miller 1:04:13
your different diagnoses, your different approaches to writing,

Traci Thomas 1:04:16
talking about your bodies and your lives. I just I found it to be really interesting. And I think I don’t know that I would have appreciated his book as much. If it weren’t for your for having read your book first, honestly, because I felt like I understood some things a little bit differently. And like, because you gave us much more context, which you know, always grateful for. But is there anything else you want to say about this before we get out of here?

Tessa Miller 1:04:40
How I feel like we did I feel like we covered a

Traci Thomas 1:04:43
lot. I feel like we covered a lot.

Tessa Miller 1:04:44
And hopefully, you know, we’ll have more to think about once everybody else reads it to Yes. I think that people are going to have feelings. Many, many feelings about this book.

Traci Thomas 1:04:57
Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. And, you know, it’s a good book. It’s just it left me wanting.

Tessa Miller 1:05:05
Yeah. I think the overall thing that we kept coming back to is just like, the feeling of distance is very apparent while you read this. Yeah. And I think that like, people will will see that and you kind of wait for that to shift and it kind of doesn’t, which, you know, maybe, like you said, was the strategy here? I don’t know. Yeah, yeah.

Traci Thomas 1:05:27
Well, everybody, thank you so much. Oh, make sure you listen to the end of the episode because we’ll you’ll find out what our book club pick is for March. Very excited. But Tessa, thank you so much for being here. Everyone. Make sure you go out and get Tesla’s book. What doesn’t kill you? It is out in paperback now. audiobook already plugged, but go get the book. It’s fantastic. Tessa, thank you so much for being here.

Tessa Miller 1:05:48
Thanks, Traci. This was such a fun way to spend the afternoon. Thank you so much.

Traci Thomas 1:05:52
Yay. And everyone else we will see you in the stacks.

All right. That does it for us today. Thank you all so much for listening. And thank you to Tessa for being our guest. All right, it’s time to announce our March book club pick and I’m thrilled to tell you all it is time for our annual Tony Morrison read. We’re doing it early this year. And for our fifth book by Ms. Morrison. We are reading a mercy. One of her later works from 2008. We’ll be discussing the book on March 30. And you’ll need to tune in next Wednesday to find out who our guest will be. If you love the show and want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks, follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram at thestackspod_ on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
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