"I Refuse To Be Good"

"I Refuse To Be Good"5 mrt32 min

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<html><h3>You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with the brilliant Savala Nolan. </h3>Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, <a href="https://splitrockbooks.com/book/9780063320086" target="_blank">Good Woman: A Reckoning</a> is out now. Her first book, <a href="https://splitrockbooks.com/book/9781982137281" target="_blank">Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body</a>, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more.I have a lot of conversations about bodies. I have a lot of conversations about gender. There is a lot that I thought I knew about race and bodies and gender in America. Reading Good Woman and talking to Savala blew my mind apart in ways that I'm still putting back together. This conversation is a must listen. This book is a must read.There was so much good stuff in this conversation, we are breaking it up into two episodes. Today in part one, we’re talking about bodies, race and gender. Part two will drop in two weeks, and that's when we're getting into sex, divorce and Savala’s classy and trashy butters. That conversation will be for paid subscribers only, so go to <a href="https://patreon.com/virginiasolesmith" target="_blank">patreon.com/virginiasolesmith</a> to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one. One last thing! Trust me, you will want to read Good Woman after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to <a href="https://splitrockbooks.com/" target="_blank">Split Rock Books</a> and use the code "fat talk" at checkout. Here's Savala.<div>If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! <a href="https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join">Join Burnt Toast</a></div>🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈<h3>Episode 235 Transcript</h3>Virginia Why don't we just start by having you tell listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?Savala I'm a writer. I was thinking about this question quite a bit, actually, because my very first instinct is to say I'm a mom, which makes perfect sense. Motherhood is all consuming. But I thought I'll start with something that doesn't include my relationship with another human being, just in the interest of practicing my own wholeness. So, I'm a writer and a mom and a lawyer. I direct the social justice program at UC Berkeley's Law School, which is really a privilege and gives me a lot of hope, because I get to see hundreds of law students every day who want to change the world and make it better. I'm also a former dieter. Like a hardcore, former dieter, which is what initially brought me into your world and your work. I was put on my first diet when I was two or three, and rode those waves up and down until I was maybe 36 or 37, so I've got a few decades under my belt. I include that in my biography because that experience of going on and off diets for so long, and of being almost pre-verbal when I was indoctrinated into that world of dieting, informs a lot of what I do, including as a mom, including as a lawyer, including as a writer. Body liberation, gender and race, they fascinate me endlessly, how they play together and kind of co-create each other. Most of what I write about, and definitely what I write a