by Robin Romm
CAMAS DAVIS has been a magazine editor and food writer for publications such as National Geographic Adventure, Saveur, The Drama Review, and Portland Monthly. She’s the founder of the Portland Meat Collective, a meat school and agricultural resource, and the Meat Collective Alliance, a nonprofit. She has become a spokes-person for food system reform, and her work has been covered in national publications from the New York Times Magazine to Martha Stewart Living. She has continued to write about her experiences in the world of meat for media outlets such as This American Life and Ecotone, and she is currently working on a memoir (Penguin, 2017). She lives in Portland, Oregon.
ROXANE GAY lives and writes in the Midwest.
CRISTINA HENRíQUEZ is the author of the novels The Book of Unknown Americans and The World in Half, and of the short story collection Come Together, Fall Apart. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in Illinois.
JULIE HOLLAND, MD, is a psychiatrist specializing in psychopharmacology with a private practice in New York City. Her book Weekends at Bellevue chronicles her nine years running its psychiatric emergency room. Featured on the Today show and CNN’s “Weed,” she’s the editor of The Pot Book and Ecstasy: The Complete Guide. She’s the medical monitor for PTSD studies involving MDMA-assisted psychotherapy or cannabis. She is a harm reductionist well known for her cannabis advocacy work. Her latest book, Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having, and What’s Really Making You Crazy has been translated into eleven languages.
PAM HOUSTON is the author of two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound; two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat; and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W. W. Norton. Her stories have been selected for volumes of the O. Henry Prize Stories, the Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories of the Century. She teaches in the Low Residency MFA Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is a professor of English at UC Davis, and directs the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers. She lives at nine thousand feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande and is at work on a book about that place.
JOAN LEEGANT is the author of a novel, Wherever You Go, and a story collection, An Hour in Paradise, which won the PEN/New England Book Award and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Formerly a lawyer, she has taught writing at Harvard, Oklahoma State, and Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. In 2014–2016 she was the writer-in-residence at Hugo House in Seattle.
AYANA MATHIS is a Philadelphia-born novelist and teacher. Her first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, was a New York Times best seller, and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Ayana was the recipient of the 2014–2015 New York Public Library’s Cullman Center Fellowship and a 2015 Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, from which she earned her Master of Fine Arts in 2011.
NADIA P. MANZOOR is a British-Pakistani actor, writer, and producer, whose autobiographical one-woman show, Burq Off!, has sold out to audiences in New York, LA, San Francisco, London, Toronto, and Korea. It has been called a “gutsy, honest, hilarious must-see!” by Deepak Chopra, and “terrific” by the Economist. She is the cocreator and lead actor in “Shugs & Fats,” a Gotham Award–winning Web series and was recently named one of the twenty-five new faces of independent film by Filmmaker magazine. Incisive and outspoken, Nadia has appeared on CNN, the BBC, NPR, Al Jazerra, and CBC’s Radio Q, and her work has been featured in Elle India, Vogue India, the Daily Beast, and the Times of India. She recently delivered a TEDx talk on the story of identity, and is a frequent guest speaker on panels that focus on women in Islam and the Muslim identity, and her writing has appeared in the Huffington Post and on India.com. She holds an MSW from Boston University, and to further fuse her passion for performance and social justice, she founded Paprika Productions, an all-female production company that produces works by brave, curious women. She lives in Brooklyn. For more information, visit nadiapmanzoor.com
FRANCINE PROSE is a novelist and critic whose most recent book, Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern, was published by Yale University Press. Her previous books include the novels Lovers at the Chameleon Club: Paris, 1932, My New American Life, Goldengrove, A Changed Man, Blue Angel (a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award), and the nonfiction New York Times best seller Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them. She writes frequently for the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books. She is a past president of PEN American Center and a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bard College. She lives in New York City.
THERESA REBECK is a widely produced playwright throughout the United States and abroad. Plays include Mauritius, The Scene, Spike Heels, and Seminar, which was on Broadway in 2011 starring Alan Rickman. In television, Ms. Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue, among others; she was also the creator of the NBC drama Smash. She recently finished her second feature film as writer/director, Trouble, starring Anjelica Huston, Bill Pullman, David Morse, and Julia Stiles. She has published three novels, Three Girls and Their Brother, Twelve Rooms with a View, and I’m Glad About You (published by Putnam in February 2016). Ms. Rebeck proudly serves on the board of PEN International as executive secretary, and she is a longtime member of the Dramatists Guild Council. Ms. Rebeck is originally from Cincinnati and holds an MFA in playwriting and a PhD in Victorian melodrama, both from Brandeis University.
MOLLY RINGWALD is an actress, author, and singer. She began her film career at the age of thirteen with her Golden Globe–nominated performance in The Tempest and has worked with such directors as Paul Mazursky, John Hughes, Cindy Sherman, and Jean-Luc Godard. She is the author of the national best seller When It Happens to You, a novel in stories. Her writing has been published in Esquire, Vogue, the Guardian, the New York Times, and Interview, among others.
SARAH RUHL is the playwright of Stage Kiss; In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee for Best New Play); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play (PEN American Award and the Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award); Melancholy Play (a musical with Todd Almond); Eurydice; Orlando; Demeter in the City (NAACP nomination); Late: A Cowboy Song; Three Sisters; Dear Elizabeth; and most recently, The Oldest Boy and For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday. Her plays have been produced on Broadway at the Lyceum by Lincoln Center Theater and off-Broadway at Playwrights’ Horizons, Second Stage, and at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her MFA from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. An alum of 13P and of the New Dramatists, she won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. She was the recipient of the PEN Center Award for a mid-career playwright, the Whiting Award, the Feminist Press’s Forty Under Forty Award, and a Lilly Award. She proudly served on the executive council of the Dramatists Guild for three years, and she is currently on the faculty at Yale School of Drama. Her book of essays on the theater and motherhood, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, was a Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. For more information, visit www.sarahruhlplaywright.com.
ERIKA L. SÁNCHEZ is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. She is the author of the poetry collection Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf, 2017) and I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf, 2017). Her poetry has been published in Guernica, ESPN.com, Boston Review, and Poetry magazine. She has also been featured on “Latino USA” on NPR and pu
blished in Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Erika is a recipient of a CantoMundo Fellowship, a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Her nonfiction has appeared in Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, and many other publications.
YAEL CHATAV SCHONBRUN, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Brown University. She has been awarded several grants from the National Institutes of Health to conduct her research on extending treatments to underserved populations. She is the author of chapters in several books on mental health conditions and treatment, has written thirty scientific articles. Dr. Schonbrun’s nonacademic writing has appeared in the New York Times, Elephant Journal, Kveller, and Psychology Today. Dr. Schonbrun also maintains a small private practice where she specializes in couples’ treatment.
EVANY THOMAS has been pinballing around the tech industry ever since the late 1990s (Microsoft! Webmonkey! Friendster! Yahoo! TED! Wells Fargo! Facebook!), with a brief detour into the print world to write The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple’s Guide to the Thirty-Nine Positions (which has since been published in German, Japanese, Chinese, British English, and Italian). She now works at Pinterest and lives in El Cerrito, California, with her husband, kid, and their two fancy pet rats. For all the details, visit www.evany.com.
CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS is the author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, which won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A Guggenheim Fellow, Claire is on the faculty of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is also the codirector, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I have to thank my contributors, all of whom carved time out of their busy lives to reflect and write on an issue that inevitably became more crucial and more complicated with every sentence they attempted. Working with them has easily been the best crash course in human experience and the artistic process available anywhere. Camas Davis, Julia Haslett, Ann Packer, Joan Leegant, and Martha Walters were great early readers and thought-shapers, offering encouragement as the project hit its various milestones. Don Waters helped me grapple with the subject on so many levels, in life and on the page (and is responsible for the title of my essay). My father, Richard Romm, has always been a fan and supporter. Thanks to my agent, Maria Massie, with whom I brainstormed this idea while living out of boxes in Iowa. And a special big-time dance-party-style throwdown for Katie Adams, whose devotion to this project was unfailing and whose mind is a quick and bright amazement.
Copyright © 2017 by Robin Romm
All rights reserved
First Edition
“On Impractical Urges,” Copyright © 2017 by Ayana Mathis. All rights reserved.
“No Happy Harmony,” Elizabeth Corey: A version of this essay previously appeared
in First Things. “The Price of Black Ambition,” Roxane Gay: A version of this essay
previously appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review. “The Chang Girls,” © Lan
Samantha Chang. “Original Sin,” Copyright © 2017 by Francine Prose. All rights
reserved. “Know Your Place,” Copyright © 2017 by Ringwald, Inc. “Escape
Velocity” © 2017 Claire Vaye Watkins
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact
W. W. Norton Special Sales at [email protected] or 800-233-4830
Book design by Helene Berinsky
Production manager: Anna Oler
JACKET DESIGN BY STEVE ATTARDO
THE JACKET AND END PAGE PATTERN FOR THIS BOOK IS THE RESULT OF A PUBLIC PARTICIPATORY PROJECT WHERE WE ASKED WOMEN TO ANONYMOUSLY SUBMIT THEIR THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, AND STORIES ABOUT AMBITION AND HOW THE DOUBLE BIND HAS AFFECTED THEM. THANK YOU TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED.
ISBN 978-1-63149-121-4
ISBN 978-1-63149-122-1 (e-book)
Liveright Publishing Corporation
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS.
