Harriet the Spy

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Among the things that you were reading, I think a solid assumption is that one of those books was Harriet the Spy?

Yeah.

Yeah, I did read some Harriet the Spy back in the day.

You've noticed the detectives running through.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah, I like Harriet the Spy.

I liked Raymond Chandler, too, when I was a little older.

Like the kind of plot of these things, like I wanted dialogue and I wanted scenes and I wanted, I don't know, I wanted like to see myself in these things.

I was into reading like Harriet the Spy or like Forever by Judy Blume.

Like that was kind of more my jam or Little House on the Prairie.

Like things where I could kind of like, I could insert myself, which is sounding very egotistical as I am saying it.

And there is one point where the daughter is like, mom, why do we have to, ma, she says, ma, why do we have to always be reading these classics? And the mother is saying, you know, sort of defending that.

But there's so many times where the daughter is reading these books where I was like, oh, my God, I couldn't even get my kids to read Harriet the Spy.

Like the like kind of intellectual rigor with which this family is living was very impressive to me.

So maybe it is not a surprise that when the 12-year-old takes over the narration later, it's not overdone.

Right, because she retreated into the pages of very specific books, and she singles out two fictional role models.

The first is Harriet the Spy.

A classic.

Such a classic.

Right, like they're just ignoring the real world.

But developmentally, it is a highly active form of engagement.

When the author was reading Harriet the Spy, she wasn't just avoiding the playground, she was actively reframing her relationship to it.

Wow, okay.

So it's, it's exciting.

It's, like if Nancy Drew or Harriet the Spy or like Veronica Mars was a public defender.

Yeah.

I'm excited about that.

She's really spunky.

She's like Harriet the Spy meets Nancy Drew if they were public defenders.

And the story is all about protecting your friend.

You know, her friend is wrongly accused, and he's in a situation where the grown-ups have not listened to him.

I think it stems from, you know, being...

I was a lover of, like, Carmen Sandiego growing up or, like, Harriet the Spy.

I think maybe that's where it comes from, or even maybe my favorite horizontal collaborator, you know, Coco Chanel.

But I feel like all of these female spy stories are just, like... they're so juicy, right? Especially because no one suspected women of being spies.

Um, Whereas when I before I was doing spoken word, I was maybe more writing from like a strictly emotional place, like just talking about, you know, romance or writing fictional stories.

I wrote a lot of like spy stories as a kid, but then like I was really into Harriet the Spy.

But then when I was, you know, when someone says to you as a teenager, what matters to you? You know, you have this opportunity to stand up on a stage and say something.

What do you want to say? And I remember my first spoken word poem.

And no one will tell him what is happening, what this is about.

And so he, as a child, it's almost like this Harriet the Spy thing where he starts trying to find, you know, answers to this and exploring this.

And then there's different sections of the book.

It's very experimental and surreal.