"I am simply mad about... middle-aged women reinventing themselves"

For most millennial women, there’s a very particular nostalgia attached to boy bands. Because I grew up in the 90s and 2000s, going through adolescence at the height of boy band fever, I can still recall how girlfriends and I identified ourselves around our type: bad girls liked bad boys like AJ McLean (who, shockingly, had tattoos!), and good girls who longed to be chosen by the popular guy next-door liked JT—until he himself became a bad boy, turning on both Janet and Brit.

As with all things youth culture of that era, none of it has aged well, but still I find my superego structured by the fantasies these bands created, and the way they structured my early sense of morality and desire. Which is why I was so captivated by the premise of Emma Straub’s latest novel, American Fantasy, about a group of aging women who take a 90s boy band reunion cruise. One of the women in the book, Annie, is newly divorced, and after an at-sea midlife awakening, the book becomes a joyful meditation about stepping into single womanhood later in life.

Emma Straub is the author of seven adult novels, and several picture books for kids. She is also devoted literary citizen. With her husband, she owns the incredible bookstore Books Are Magic, the beloved independent bookstore in Brooklyn (where I was slated to read for my last book tour, until an insane New York City storm shut everything down)! It’s such an honor and delight to have Emma participate in the Mad Woman Intake.

What is something you are mad about right now?

I am simply mad about boybands. And middle-aged women reinventing themselves.

What “feelings rules” did you learn growing up? What did those lessons teach you about gender, relationships, and the world?

This is a hard question, just lurking in this questionnaire! Both of my parents were in analysis for my entire childhood, which might make you think we all talked about feelings a lot, but I think what it actually taught me is that feelings are meant to be discussed with the proper professionals. It was the eighties, though, what are you gonna do.

What is your relationship now to feeling/emotion? What feelings scare you most? Which emotions do you find most powerful? Do you like feeling things?

Oh lots of them scare me. I like a professional sheen, in public. That feels very millennial, and therefore embarrassing, but it’s true. Disappointment, fear, anxiety, shame, all the bad ones! I don’t like feeling any of those babies. I’ve been working on my anxiety for some years now and it has gotten better, but woof, no siree, not my favorite.

Do you think of your creative process as related to a state of madness? Emotional expression? Some other way?

Emotional expression, yes. I put it all in there, every time.

What is your relationship to diagnosis?

The older I get, the more comfortable I am, but I suppose that’s true of pretty much everything.

If you had to diagnose yourself with something, what would it be?

Anxiety for sure, ADHD seems pretty locked in too.

Have you ever felt normal, healthy, or healed? Why or why not? What is your relationship to these concepts?

I feel healthier at the moment than I ever have, because I’m actually trying to take care of myself in lots of directions. Therapy! Meditation! A personal trainer! Vegetables! Not drinking very much, etc. I can’t say I believe in normal, unless normal contains room for neurodiversity, etc. And as for healed, I would feel phony baloney going anywhere near that.

How do art and culture make you feel? What are your favorite feelings to have when engaging with books or culture? What do you hope people feel when they engage with your work?

Alive? A part of the world? I love to be surprised by an artist’s inventiveness and imagination. I love to be whisked away, to want to just keep reading, or to watch one more episode. I hope people feel that way about my books.

What is the relationship between politics and art for you, and in your work?

All books contain the time and space in which they were written, whether or not you try to include those things, and so I think my politics and art are intertwined no matter what. One of my favorite one star reviews of my books complained that my book had “gay marriage and cussing,” which it did.

Is there a question you are often asked in interviews that makes you angry or uncomfortable? What do you wish people would ask you instead?

Young women novelists are often asked which of their characters is most autobiographical, but the older I get, the less people ask me that, or care. It is very interesting, getting older, as a person who engages with publicity. One can see a lot of things more clearly with the passage of time.

What is something keeping you sane right now?

Widow’s Bay is the most perfect television show I’ve seen in years. Roasted broccoli with a nutritional yeast vinaigrette. The color pink.