Kate Schatz on Having an Agenda

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

In this episode, Mitzi talks to Kate Schatz about her new novel, Where the Girls Were.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Mitzi Rapkin: In your novel you have a storyline inspired by your mother, but I think it’s also very, very hard when you have these political, quote, unquote agendas or things you want to talk about, but it still has to be in a form of entertainment. Did struggle with that in terms of putting it into a narrative and not being preachy?

Kate Schatz: Well, that’s an interesting question, because I think I’m coming to realize that that’s actually what all of my books do. I think that’s my thing, actually. So, you know, with the other books I’ve written the RAD women book series, which is a series of books for young readers about cool women from history, and then one in the series that is about men as well, and moments and movements where people have kind of changed American history. And then I wrote a book called Do the Work.

It’s an anti-racist activity book that I wrote with Kamau Bell, who’s a comedian, and we use games and humor and coloring book pages and a kind of playful approach to talk about the incredibly serious topic of white supremacy and racism. So, in all of those books, I am using really engaging techniques and illustrations and bright colors; I’m using kind of fun storytelling to get readers to engage with absolutely a radical political agenda, which is telling the stories of marginalized people in communities who’ve been fighting for justice. I write about kind of obscure feminist heroes from countries around the world that most American readers won’t be familiar with.

So, I do a lot of that work in those books. I kind of think of them as kind of a Trojan horse, in a way. And I realized that with this book, it absolutely has an agenda. I absolutely have an agenda. I always have. It’s a social justice agenda. It’s a peace and liberation agenda. And, yeah, nobody wants to be preached at. Nobody wants to be lectured to. And that’s something that I know, and I really did intentionally with my other books. You know, how can I get adults who don’t want to be lectured about racism to engage meaningfully and thoughtfully with ideas about race? Well, again, you use humor, you use unexpected techniques you make something seem kind of fun.

And so, with this I wanted to create a story that feels immersive and engaging, personal and heartfelt, and yes, it is absolutely set against the backdrop of real political change that is in tumult, that is incredibly relevant today, and readers will get that, and they can make their connections. But, yeah, I don’t like to hit people over the head with things, but I definitely like to put it all right in front of them.

***

Kate Schatz is a feminist author, educator, and public speaker. She’s the New York Times-bestselling author of the “Rad Women” book series; the novel Where the Girls Were; the 33 ⅓ book Rid of Me: A Story; and Do the Work: An Anti-Racist Activity Book, co-written with W. Kamau Bell. She lives in the Bay Area with her wife, three children, and pets. In all she does, Kate is committed to sharing radical histories that shine light on the marginalized people who’ve truly made America (and the world) great: the people of color, the immigrants, the queers, the punks, the weirdos, the artists, the workers, and the women.