I just launched a brand new podcast called MAYBE IT’S ME, in which I share some of the darkly comic personal essays I’ve been writing over the past twenty or thirty years. You can find it on most of the sites where you find podcasts–Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.–or on its own website: https://sites.libsyn.com/555897/site.
I’m not nearly as funny as David Sedaris, but imagine if Sedaris were female, straight, and Jewish, and you’ve pretty much got the idea. The essays I’m going to be presenting originally were published in a collection called MAYBE IT’S ME: ON BEING THE WRONG KIND OF WOMAN. The book got some really great reviews … but in today’s world, if a book that doesn’t have the marketing budget of a huge conglomerate it only reaches the author’s friends and relatives. Maybe I’m a deluded egotist, but I wanted to connect with a larger audience (you should be able to find the podcast anywhere you usually look for podcasts).
What are these essays about? Well, in my six decades on this planet I’ve witnessed an astonishing amount of social upheaval, challenges to my ambitions, difficult relationships, violence, and just plain weirdness. Through it all, I’ve never lost my sense of humor. How could I? I grew up at a hotel in the Borscht Belt. A love of comedy was bred in my bones as deeply as a love of sour cream.
Like most Jewish humor, mine is rooted in life’s most serious questions. Why have I always felt so out of place? So… wrong? Wrong as a daughter, wrong as a physics student, wrong as a girlfriend, as a wife, a mother, a teacher, an American, a Jew, and yes, even as a writer. In every essay I write, I set out to explore a question that is bugging me. What didn’t I understand about my parents when I was young? Could the Shah of Iran really have been a Jew? How could I raise a child who’d be aware of his people’s history but not constrained by the fears and prejudices of the past? How might I find love and romance—and yes, sexual pleasure—in my fifties and sixties, dating in Manhattan?
I was all set to start to set up my podcast. But then Donald Trump got re-elected and, like many of you, I collapsed in a fog of despair and disbelief. Had the country I love really picked a convicted felon, a rapist, a white Christian nationalist, a liar, a cheat, a conman, a cruel and demonstrably senile and all-around hideous human being as our next president instead of, say, a highly experienced, apparently sane and even likable woman of color? As someone who grew up in a family where the terrors of the Holocaust were recent memory, I found myself wondering what I would have wanted the citizens of Germany to have done to prevent Hitler and his Nazis from destroying millions of lives, along with their entire country. Was I brave enough to resist in ways I wish those Germans had resisted?
Suddenly, my essays seemed beside the point. If we were going to be fighting for our lives—and fighting to protect our friends and fellow citizens—why should anyone care what I had to say? I decided to give up the podcast. But then, over the next few weeks, I discovered I no longer could bear the news. I couldn’t read The New York Times or The Washington Post. I couldn’t watch MSNBC. Even listening to my beloved NPR drove me nuts. Of course I’m going to stay informed about whatever new outrages Trump and his minions might try to pull. But I need something to take my mind off all the horrors. I’m listening to podcasts more than ever, watching comedy shows, detective shows, reading more novels and stories. Art matters. Stories matter. Humor matters. Sharing our voices, our experiences, our deepest thoughts and feelings matters.
So, here we go. I’m going to start with the essays I’ve already written, then move on to new material, written in response to whatever shadows the Dark Lord and his Deatheaters cast over our lives. I’m not going to ask you to buy anything. I won’t be interrupting myself with ads. What I hope to do is convince you aren’t the one who’s nuts. You’re not the only human being who thinks you’re crazy for continuing to believe in kindness, fairness, empathy, love. And maybe, just maybe, I can help prevent this meshuggener world from driving you even crazier than it already has.
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