Anita Rao 0:00
I've always found it easiest to express love and affection through writing. Never was this made more clear to me than when I was 18 and I gave my best friend a copy of a college essay I've written about her. The prompts was: tell us about a good friend of yours and what you most respect about them. I wrote about her ability to inject creativity and play into everything, her uncompromising honesty and unmatched quirkiness. When she read the essay, she was moved to tears and said, "I had no idea you thought all of this about me!" While my first thought was, "Oops!", I have since grown to embrace that writing is my love language. It's through writing that I can find my way to the deep feelings I have for others. And through writing, I can declare them in a way that both honors that intimacy and shouts in celebration about it to the wider world. This is Embodied, our show about sex, relationships and your health. I'm Anita Rao.
Writing about love and intimacy requires a rare blend of vulnerability and gumption. That feat is made even more difficult when you've rarely seen your own experience reflected in the love stories you consume. Today, we'll meet three disabled folks for whom writing has become a tool for finding and expressing love, both for themselves and for others. With me first is Keah Brown. She's a journalist and author of a number of books, including a personal essay collection called "The Pretty One." Hey, Keah, welcome to Embodied.
Keah Brown 1:45
Hi, thanks for having me.
Anita Rao 1:47
So in the intro to this essay collection, "The Pretty One," you describe how in the process of writing this book, you had to go back and contend with various moments in your past, and through this process, you learned new things about yourself. What did writing help you uncover about your relationship with your body in your early childhood?
Keah Brown 2:03
I think what it helped me uncover is the fact that I held value all along. I think, for a really long time, I was very much uncomfortable with the sort of confidence and eagerness and excitement that my younger self held, and how comfortable she was in her body. Because by the time I hit puberty, I was very uncomfortable. And so what writing has allowed me to do and specifically what I think "The Pretty One" allowed me to do, was forgive myself now for my own embarrassment, but also to embrace my younger self, for her excitement and for her joy, and then work to try to get that back for myself now.
Anita Rao 2:54
So take me back to that younger self who felt that exuberance and joy. What was your self-perception of your body growing up as a kid?
Keah Brown 3:03
I just thought I was a quote unquote, normal kid. I didn't even think about disability until I was 12. So my mom was very adamant that whatever my sister and brother got, I got. She was very much like, "Whatever they can do, you can do, we just have to find a workaround." And so I never thought of my body as anything different. And I think only when I was 12 when I realized like, "Oh, different means bad, because some kids are making fun of me in school," that I realized, "Oh, my entire childhood before that, I didn't even think about my body," because I didn't have to. You know, my extended family never made me feel like I was different in a way that inherently meant that different was bad, until I got out of the home. And that's when I learned that different was somehow bad for a lot of people. But those early childhood - I was a kid with a huge imagination, who loves telling stories and writing stories and running and playing and maybe pushing my body past its limits too much.
Anita Rao 4:08
Well, tell me about that middle school turning point. It seems like there was a really significant shift for you that happened. So take me back to that day that encounter. What happened?
Keah Brown 4:20
Absolutely. So I was, you know, in the school cafeteria, as you are sometimes in these scenarios, and I was just eating my lunch with my friends. And I got up to you know, get rid of the food that I was done eating. And this kid, he started making fun of the way that I walk. And he was a new kid in school. So I don't know, I guess he felt comfortable thinking that people were going to join in with him making fun of you know, the fact that I walk with a limp. And so he was following me around the cafeteria, and I didn't realize that at first. It wasn't until my friends you know called it out. They were like, "Hey, what are you doing? That's not funny." I think he thought that everybody was going to laugh with him. And instead, to my complete surprise as an adult, these kids and these friends that I'd made protected me. And yet, and still, I think the experience really changed how I saw myself despite that clear, and honestly, genuine protection from them.
Anita Rao 5:19
So you had a twin sister, you've mentioned a bit about your family earlier. And after this middle school revelation, you went through a dark period in your relationship with your body, you compared yourself a lot to your sister, and you write about this in the book is thinking about her as the pretty one. Tell me more about what that meant that she was the pretty one.
Keah Brown 5:41
Absolutely. I said by the time we hit puberty, and like, people started finding people attractive, you know, that special age of awkwardness?
Anita Rao 5:50
Oh, yes.
Keah Brown 5:51
People would tell me all the (laughs) people would tell me all the time that they thought, you know, Leah and I didn't look that much alike. And like, Leah is so pretty. She's like, pretty, and I really internalized that. And I made it her fault. You know, because I felt like her being pretty met my lack, because people were so eager to tell me how much we didn't look alike. And I think even the people that didn't realize that they were making that connection, it was just this constant reminder that she was pretty to them, and we didn't look that much alike. And then I'd have guys come up to me and be like, "Hey, can you put in a good word for your sister?" And so it really made me internalize the fact that nobody was asking Leah that same question. And so I really started to compare our bodies. And once I saw, like, Leah doesn't have a disability, her hand doesn't have fingers that are bent in a variety of ways because of surgery, and she doesn't walk with a limp, and she doesn't have cerebral palsy. And so it made me angry. And so I grew angry at her. And I wanted her to feel the sort of pain I was feeling.
Anita Rao 7:00
So these feelings really evolved throughout your teens and your early 20s. But you did get to a point in 2016 that you describe in an essay this way, I'm just going to read it because I love the way that you wrote this. "One of the strangest things in life is to live in a body you've spent most of your life hating only to wake up a few days after Christmas, and feel genuinely cute for the first time since your high school prom." So take us back to that day. How did that big shift happened for you?
Keah Brown 7:31
It happened I think, you know, I always say like the John Green quote "slowly and then all at once," because - very much a reader - so I think it was because I started thinking about myself in terms of what positive things that other people might be seeing. So I was writing in all these places that I long dreamed of writing in. I was like really doing well in my career. And I said to myself, "Well, hey, if you're writing things that people like, there's got to be something about you that they also like." And so I was saying four things that I like about myself in the mirror every single day to hold on to that feeling. And I just think I grew tired of being mean to myself in preparation for the world to be mean to me.
Anita Rao 8:16
Tell me about this practice of like four words of affirmation. Can you give me an example of what this sounds like?
Keah Brown 8:22
Oh, absolutely. I love examples. So, so I would say things like, "I like my nose and my eyes and my smile. And I like that I am loyal to my friends." It was always three physical things in one non-physical thing, so that I would wake up the next morning and I'd say "Okay, today, I like your right hand. And I like these specific fingers. And I like your legs. And I like your eyebrows. And I like that you have great taste in music." So it was always me just trying to reinforce three physical things because it started so deeply with issues of my physical appearance. But I wanted to always be able to remind myself that there were personality traits that were great about me as well.
Anita Rao 9:06
You always see those like affirmation videos of like the importance of saying things to yourself in the mirror. I'm curious for you like what did you feel changed once you took that tangible practice to actually say it out loud, put it out in the universe?
Keah Brown 9:21
At first, it felt so weird. And I was like, this is so silly. And I remembered - like so silly - and and I remembered, "Okay, Keah, the door is shut. Just say it out loud." Like, I think the more I did it, the more I found myself eager to find new things so that I wasn't repeating. And so it became sort of a game, a challenge. And I really enjoyed that about it because it felt like this thing that I was doing for myself, but also this thing that I could win. I'm a very competitive Virgo. So I'm like, "Okay, Keah, if we don't repeat anything this week, we win." I don't know exactly what I won, but it was a really cool practice to try it. To beat myself at like a compliment game.
Anita Rao 10:03
So you took this practice that was more private in your own bathroom with yourself and you did a more public version of it on Twitter. You shared four photos you liked about yourself with the hashtag disabled and cute. And then this hashtag went viral. It was global. What was it like to see this expression of self-love catch on like that?
Keah Brown 10:25
I was floored because I just, I never thought that anybody would actually use the hashtag. I was, of course, as you often are as a journalist, on deadline. So I literally posted the pictures and the hashtag, and then I left Twitter. And so by the time I came back, it was viral, like, at the end of the week, and then the next week was global. And they were talking about me in languages I can't speak. So I had to like, ask my friends who could speak those languages. I was like, "This is good, right?" And like, "This is great." And I think one of the things that made me feel the most empowered for myself and also for the community is that it became a place where people could share their own journeys of self-love. And I think one person said to me, and I'll never forget it, that it felt like I gave them permission to love themselves. And so that, honestly, to this day is still the best thing that's ever happened to me or that I could ever dream of happening with the hashtag.
Anita Rao 11:27
Public expressions of love, like Keah's hashtag, can be incredibly affirming. But sharing your most vulnerable thoughts out loud, also daunting. Coming up, we're going to meet someone who recently shared her love story publicly for the first time in the form of a personal essay. She reflects on why as a disabled person, she had to consider divorce before she even got married. That story right after this break.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Alice Wong has lived the life of an activist. She's written extensively about disabled rights, lobbied on Capitol Hill and founded the Disability Visibility Project, a multimedia community dedicated to amplifying disabled culture. But in 2022, she had to take a significant pause. After a serious medical emergency, she lost the ability to speak and eat. In the aftermath of this scare, Alice took stock of what she values most in life. And at the front of her mind were community, intimacy and love. She shared her thoughts with us via a text to speech app.
Alice Wong 12:45
I turned 50 this year, and I've been reflecting a lot about the past. I had a serious hospitalization two years ago, resulting in a tracheostomy at my neck that's connected to a ventilator that I am dependent on 24/7 and a feeding tube for nutrition and hydration. I had to heal and adjust to a radically new cyborg body with complex medical needs that no longer felt mine. When I became seriously sick that summer, almost dying multiple times, I experienced such gentle waves of community care and love. I was at a very low point and needed so much help. My friendships became more intimate and that deepened my understanding of intimacy. There is so much disabled wisdom and creativity that completely expands and blows up conventional understandings of intimacy.
Anita Rao 14:02
Recently, Alice published an anthology called "Disability Intimacy" that examines the many dimensions of disabled love. One of the contributors to that anthology is Maria Town. Her piece is called "This is My Solemn Vow." Maria is with me now. Hey, Maria, welcome to the show.
Maria Town 14:20
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Anita Rao 14:22
So one thing that I've heard you share before is that a core value of the disability community is interdependence and relying on one another. What was your relationship to interdependence growing up as a kid?
Maria Town 14:37
So, you know, as, as a child, I spent a lot of time in things like physical therapy so that I could move about the world as independently as possible. And I spent a lot of time learning how to be as non disabled as possible so that I could ultimately be independent. But in reality I experienced interdependence on a daily basis. One of my favorite memories of this is, you know, when I was a child, I went to public school and ate lunch at school, and I could not carry my lunch tray by myself. And so other kids would help me carry my lunch tray. And I actually wasn't teased a lot as a child. Because while other kids helped me, I also helped other kids with their homework. I helped people, you know, study for their reading tests and spelling tests. And one of my memories, when thinking back to it, I knew I was meant to be like an organizer, and an advocate. You know, when I was a kid, I wanted to do what all of the other kids did. And one of the things that I really wanted to do was play on the monkey bars. And at one point, the other kids and I figured out a way for people to kind of hold me up to try the monkey bars. And I was organizing all these other kids so that we could all play together, and we got in trouble. But, but we did it. And we did it because we we were interdependent, and recognized that when we, when we could all play together, we had a better experience.
Anita Rao 16:18
So this experience as a young activist and organizer, someone who is open to intimacy is a big part of your love story with your wife, Cheryl, that you share in the essay that we were talking about, "This is My Solemn Vow." Tell me a little bit about Cheryl, and maybe a memory that comes to mind when you think about the early days of your relationship.
Maria Town 16:42
Cheryl is amazing. She is one of the kindest people I've ever known. She is exceptionally thoughtful and loving and empathetic. And I think one of the moments where I realized like, oh, wow, Cheryl is really incredible and I love her so much - we moved across the country together from Texas to Washington, D.C. at the end of 2019. So shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and we moved into an apartment in a very dense part of the city. And we don't have any kind of easy access to outdoor space. But one of our apartment windows looks out on a maintenance roof. And Cheryl was like, "You know, I think we could go out there. And that will give us access to the outdoors when we're stuck in isolation." And I just remember, like, asking her like, "How in the world am I going to get out there? I can't climb through a window." And Cheryl was like, "No, we're gonna figure this out. We're gonna figure this out together," and figured out that we could like push a table up against the window, and I could climb up on a stool and then kind of slide out. And it wasn't a question that, you know, "Oh, Maria, you shouldn't do this. Because it's risky. Or it's too hard." It's like, "No, of course, we will do this, of course, we will figure out hard things together. And we're going to have fun while we do it." And if that is not a value you need to share as you enter into a marriage, I don't know what is.
Anita Rao 18:24
I love that. And you all did have like a very swift and deep falling in love. You propose not too long after you all started dating, and she said yes. And you wrote about this moment in your relationship in the essay that we have been talking about. And you said that basically as soon as you all got engaged, you immediately began to think about the circumstances that could lead to your divorce. What are those circumstances?
Maria Town 18:55
Well, in the United States, if you are a person with a disability who uses need-tested benefits, particularly Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid, there are basically rules that discourage marriage. And so if you get married, your spouse's income counts against yours, and it can cause you to lose your benefits. And really importantly, benefits like SSI and Medicaid are benefits that provide people with health care. And often this type of health care is the only way for people who need personal attendance services and other home- and community-based services to get access to these really, really critical services. And so, there are so many disabled people in the United States who are in long-term partnerships but aren't - have never been able to get married, because a marriage would cause them to lose the benefits that are actually allow them to continue living at home. And similarly, there are many couples who have been married for years and years, but as a disability progresses, and one spouse has more significant care needs, in order to get access to the systems that provide that care, they have to get divorced in order to qualify for Medicaid. And I am acutely aware of all of these things. Because even today, right, I rely on Cheryl to help me put my shoes on every day and like I can't, I cannot leave our apartment without her help or without the help of someone else. And if I ever got to a point where I had more significant needs, not only would I have to quit my job, we would have to get divorced. And so I truly for myself cannot think of marriage without also thinking about divorce.
Anita Rao 21:00
So you and Cheryl had to kind of look at this, I guess potential change in your future while also trying to celebrate and get really excited about making this commitment to each other. And in addition to these legal and policy implications of marriage, you also had some challenging conversations with people in your life, like you called your mom to share that you all were getting engaged. And I'd love for you to tell us about that conversation.
Maria Town 21:30
I did. It was an incredibly hard conversation. So my whole life, my mom, like there's always been this sort of insistence on like, "You need to continue to stretch, you need to continue to sit up straight and you need to continue to walk because if you don't, you're going to become more disabled." So when I told my mom that Cheryl and I were engaged, it did not go well. And actually, the conversation that I write about in the essay is the second conversation that I had with my mom, when a little bit of time has passed. And I was hopeful that, that a conversation between the two of us would be productive. And I asked her how she felt about my engagement to Cheryl, and she said, "Maria, I wish you would take better care of your health." And to a lot of people, that response might sound very confusing. But I knew exactly why my mom was saying that. And I responded and I said, "Are you saying that because you think if I become more disabled, Cheryl will leave me?" And she said yes. And it was a moment where I got to be very proud and say, "I absolutely know that that is not the case." And honestly, in the, you know, few years that we have been together, Cheryl has already seen kind of my function decline, to use more clinical language. And she is honestly one of the people who continues to insist that I deserve all the things and that I should not beat up on myself for not being able to do as much as I once could. So it was a moment where I got to respond and really tell my mom how confident I was in this partnership. But it was, it's like, I'm tearing up just relaying the conversation to you because it was really hard to hear.
Anita Rao 23:49
Thank you for for taking us into that. And I know that these are threads that come up in in a lot of folks' writing and work, and I want to bring Keah Brown back into the conversation and talk about her own take on this, because Keah, in your writing you also talk about the journey that you've been on to unlink your romantic fantasies from fantasies about able-bodiedness. And how this has been an ongoing part of your journey. What has it been like for you to work on untangling these two things?
Keah Brown 24:21
It's been really hard but worthwhile work. I think for a very long time I believed that no one could love me in a body like mine. And then you know like Maria, I mean even, even just hearing her story was really nice because it reminded me like no, there are disabled people who fall in love every day. And it's not impossible for someone to fall in love with me. And I came out in 2019 on Coming Out Day the way you do. So I was petrified because I thought it meant, "Okay, now I'm opening opening up myself for even more rejection," right, so not just rejection from men, but rejection from women and nonbinary people. And I had to go to therapy and realize like, it doesn't mean that I'm opening myself up for rejection, what it means is that I'm opening up my potential to be my full self and to live unapologetically. And that it's not something that is yet again added against me, but it's a part of who I am. And anybody that I ended up with will respect that, not have to look past it, or whatever, they'll just respect that this is who I am. And this is a part of loving me.
Anita Rao 25:39
You write really openly and beautifully about kind of naming your desires and fantasies for romantic love and what those could look like and how those could show up in your life. Tell us more about what those are and how you balance putting that out there with with also nourishing and loving yourself.
Keah Brown 26:00
That's a beautiful question. Thank you. I think for me, I've always believed in speaking things into existence, just in every aspect of my life. Like, if I want it, I have to say it out loud so that God and the universe knows that I want it. So I'm always like, "I want to meet Drew Barrymore and, and I want someone to love me as a fully realized person." And for me, that literally just looks like having someone to share my life with, someone to come home to after a long day, or to complain about how long an essay is taking or a book is taking me to write, like, I just want someone that I can sit on the couch with at the end of the day, watching movies, look over and say, "It's so nice to love you." While also understanding that we have our own lives. I think what my desire for romantic love has taught me is that I have so much other love in my life, you know, the love of my friends and family that I never want to let those go in favor of romantic love. And so what my hope is that I will meet a partner who understands that it's so good when we come together, but we can also have lives apart. But I do want someone to share the life that I'm creating for myself with.
Anita Rao 27:17
Maria, I know that historically you have been a more private person about your relationship, but you have now put this essay out there, and your love story with Cheryl is out there in a way because of this essay. How are you feeling about that?
Maria Town 27:32
It feels great that I can both celebrate our love and to hear Keah say, you know, it was good for her to learn more about my story. Like, that's exactly the point. The personal is political, and my essay, it's, it's a mix of my personal story and honestly, policy recommendations. And I think that kind of pairing is so real for many disabled people because we, we recognize how much like policy shapes our everyday lives. And so I couldn't just put an essay together about you know, marriage penalties for disabled people and barriers to love and partnership for disabled people without sharing a bit of myself too. And I really hope that people can can read it and not only see that love is possible for anyone in so many shapes and forms but also that our country actively prevents people from establishing the partnerships that they want and need in order to live the lives that they choose, and then act.
Anita Rao 28:46
We've been talking about how both of you have used writing as a tool to kind of find and communicate your love for other people, your love for yourselves and how there hasn't been a lot of representation of this throughout time in history. I would love to end from each of you on the question of like, what are the disabled love stories that you are excited to tell next, to share next? I know Keah, you're, you're a fiction writer, so maybe I'll start with you and give you that question. And then Maria, give you a chance to weigh in also.
Keah Brown 29:18
Yeah, I mean, I really love messy, complicated characters. And so it is my dream to see a story where a Black woman who's disabled or just a disabled woman in general falls in love, and she's not perfect, and she doesn't have it all figured out. And she makes mistakes. I think a part of that is because I write both fiction and nonfiction. It's really important for me to do what I can to expand the idea of disability and as its face, it's so very white. And so for me it would be really nice to see a disabled person of color being messy and complicated and falling in love and not having to die in service of a nondisabled character. I think just to have a disabled person live is revolutionary, but I think to have them fall in love and, and have a partner who understands them and lets them have their bad days along with the good without it having to be like, "Okay, I'm finally coming to terms with disability" story - that's the kind of story I want to see.
Anita Rao 30:27
Maria, how about you?
Maria Town 30:28
Well, since we're talking about disability and romance, I have to give a shout out to "Bridgerton" and Shondaland for their inclusion of a debutante that used sign language, who's deaf, and we've begun to see characters who use wheelchairs and so, like, give me Regency period dramas and love stories with disabled people in them, right, but I also - so one of the things that I'm most excited about doing is growing old with my wife and becoming a disabled queer elder alongside Cheryl, because we disabled kids deserve to become disabled adults, and disabled adults deserve to grow old with dignity and with love. And I want to see more of those stories.
Anita Rao 31:27
Like Maria said, mainstream shows like "Bridgerton" are just beginning to incorporate disabled characters into their cast. While most of popular culture has been slow to adopt diverse love stories, romance novels have been doing so for a little while. Coming up, we'll meet one of the novelists leading this charge. She's written more than 20 rom coms featuring disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent characters falling in love. We'll talk with her just after this break.
I'm Anita Rao. And this is Embodied, where we're talking today about disability, love and writing. It is hard to talk about these three things without bringing up Alice Wong. As we mentioned earlier, Alice is a disability rights activist who has published numerous books about how culture considers and depicts disability. And through her explorations, she has taken note of where society misses the mark. She communicates using a text to speech app and sent some of those thoughts to us.
Alice Wong 32:32
Currently, society views disabled people as broken with lives of pity, dysfunction and pain. I have a feeling some nondisabled people might be uncomfortable or even disgusted by the idea of disability intimacy. Our culture can't wrap their heads around disabled pleasure, creativity and sensuality. There's a preponderance of stories and coverage by the media about disability that dwell on stigma, discrimination and barriers. When there are positive stories, they're often inspirational, teachable moments to nondisabled audiences. These narrow portrayals perpetuate stereotypes and tropes, reduce disabled people into simplistic caricatures. Intimacy is more than sex or romantic love. Intimacy is an ever-expanding universe composed of a myriad of heavenly bodies. Intimacy is about relationships within a person's self, with others, with communities, with nature and beyond.
Anita Rao 33:58
As Alice alluded to, the landscape of stories about disabled love is limited. But authors like the one you're about to meet are working to shift that. Talia Hibbert is an award-winning British author who's written more than 20 romance novels, many of which feature neurodivergent and disabled lead characters. Hey Talia, welcome to Embodied.
Talia Hibbert 34:18
Hi, thank you for having me.
Anita Rao 34:20
So you have a lifelong passion for romance novels going back to your childhood. You read your first romance book at the age of 12. So tell me about your earliest memories of reading romance novels and what hooked you into this genre.
Talia Hibbert 34:35
Okay, so I got into this genre accidentally. At the time, it was quite common in the U.K. for romance novel covers to be illustrated, which is a trend that returned recently. And so I did pick up a book with a very nice green cover with a drawing of a girl in a nice dress on the front, and I thought, "Oh, this looks good. This looks fun." And then sort of halfway through, some events occurred that shocked me to my core. But it was too late because I had already fallen in love with the way that romance works, the way that two main characters or more than two are simultaneously exploring their own individual arcs, but also this arc that they share together. And that the goal is for everyone to know themselves and know each other and be loved for who they are. And I think that is what made me fall for romance. And that's why I read and write it.
Anita Rao 35:36
How did the love stories that were playing out in these novels you were reading compared to your own experience of love and romance as a teenager?
Talia Hibbert 35:46
Ooh, so I didn't have a lot of experience of romantic love as a teenager. I am autistic, it was an incredibly awkward time, at least twice as awkward as my adult life, three times. So I really spent a lot of time observing other people forming relationships, exploring these themes that I only read about. And I didn't feel that I was missing out, because I would have felt very uncomfortable, I think, to be dating, for example, when I was 15, or 16. I personally was not ready for that. But I was also aware that if I had been ready for it, probably no one would have been on board to do it with me because I was considered very strange and different. But I also think that reading romance influenced my expectations of romance throughout my life. And I think in that regard, it's served me very well.
Anita Rao 36:48
You have become really well known for your trilogy about the Brown sisters, Chloe, Eve and Dani, and this series really began with Chloe's story. Tell me about this character and how she came to you.
Talia Hibbert 37:02
Chloe and her story really spawned the entire series. At the time, I had been reading a lot of romantic comedies, I was loving it. And usually when I'm reading something that I love, my first thought is, "Well, I want to write something like this." And so I thought, you know, what's funny that I have experience of that I would like to see on the page. And the first thing that came to mind was the experience of living with chronic pain, with chronic fatigue, with disability, because I feel like there's a lot of negativity and preconceived ideas about the lives of disabled people. And I mean, it's definitely not fun to be disabled all the time. But I think that people miss out on how funny it can be sometimes, you know, living a life that is made up of just figuring things out, just winging it, because the day-to-day setup doesn't suit you. And so you have to be kind of an adventurer in your own world. And that is where Chloe's character came from. And that is where her story came from.
Anita Rao 38:10
So tell me more about finding that humor within a love story. Like, can you give me an example of what that looks like?
Talia Hibbert 38:19
So, in the book, there is a situation where Chloe and her love interest meet and have a conversation while she is stuck up a tree. And it's very much sort of a classic rom com moment for a heroine to be clumsy and disaster-prone. Everybody likes to laugh at it. And I know that actually, there are a lot of discussions as to the position that heroines like that hold in feminist literature. And what I've always thought those discussions exclude is the experience of people who are disaster-prone, because that's just the way their bodies make their lives. So in Chloe's situation, she wanted to climb a tree, she felt in the moment as if she could, she got up, she realized she had severely miscalculated. And that's the sort of thing that happens when your body is a bit unpredictable and unreliable and doesn't always have your back. It is a bit of a bummer. But a lot of the time, you can laugh at yourself, and you can take it as one of those romcom moments. And that's what I wanted to do. And so she does get rescued. And it is a moment as well for her love interest to learn more about what she goes through and how she handles it.
Anita Rao 39:40
I've heard you talk before about when you're developing characters, you aim for something called incidental representation. Can you talk more about what that means to you and how it informs how you write?
Talia Hibbert 39:54
As someone who's always enjoyed seeing themselves in books, films, TV shows, but has not always been lucky enough to have that experience, I have always preferred when a character is like me, and it's not made it into some huge point. For example, I'm Black, I consider it incredibly normal that I'm Black, I might say that Black is for me the most normal thing to be. So it's very strange when I'm reading about a character who's also Black, who seems to think of themselves as some sort of weird unicorn for being Black. So, for me, I far prefer incidental representation where people exist, and they are who they are, and it might impact their lives, it might impact their story, but it's not treated as something alien and strange.
Anita Rao 40:50
So you write various parts of your own life into your characters, Chloe, as we were talking about, deals with chronic pain and fibromyalgia, which is something that you have also navigated. I'm curious about how writing in romance as a genre particularly allows you to explore aspects of your own disability.
Talia Hibbert 41:14
One thing I have found as a disabled person is that a lot of people don't know anything about disability. And a lot of people really do think in terms of you're either normal, or not normal. And so I find it interesting that romance is a genre where the characters' interior lives are the most important thing. And characters knowing each other and being known is the most important thing. I think disability can be isolating, but in romance novels, no one is ever allowed to stay isolated. They're all about those connections, you know, from the central love story, too. It's very common in romance novels for characters to find family, or to build friendships along the way, you know, community. And so one thing I enjoy about writing disability and romance is it allows me to think, you know, if this aspect of disability was in fact, widely known, accepted, welcomed, laughed about, explored, what would that look like? And I get to weave that into the fantasy that is romance.
Anita Rao 42:27
That reminds me of what Maria was talking about earlier with interdependence and the acknowledgement that that is an important aspect of disability culture. And you do explore this in your work through a variety of different kinds of intimacy. And I love that, that you also really showcased the intimacy between siblings and the intimacy within families. How has writing helped you better understand the depth of familial intimacy?
Talia Hibbert 42:54
It's funny, because at the beginning of this whole conversation, you were talking about writing, and how writing helped you express feelings and how you felt about the people around you more. So I feel exactly the same way. And I write about family a lot in my novels, because my family is incredibly important to me. And quite similarly to the way that Keah mentioned that before she went to school and was exposed to other people, she wasn't really aware of her body, or the idea that people might perceive her as different because of the way her family treated her. I've been lucky enough to have the same experience. So my family means a lot to me. And yet, it wasn't until I started writing about family that I realized how little I communicated them with them.
Anita Rao 43:48
I can understand that.
Talia Hibbert 43:53
And so, one thing that I've really enjoyed actually, is that even though I'd rather they didn't, a lot of my family members now read my books, and they discuss them with the family members who don't and that is mortifying, but also for them to see how family comes up again and again as a theme in my work has really added something to our relationships. And it's also made me more aware that I should say, "Hey, you know, love you guys" sometimes.
Anita Rao 44:23
Sometimes occasionally. Well, you do have your own evolving personal love story. You mentioned earlier that as a teenager, you, you weren't necessarily living the love stories that you were reading about. But you did I know just get married. What have been the parts of your own love story that you have wanted to explore also through writing?
Talia Hibbert 44:50
I would say my personal love story is inextricably linked to my romance writing in that way. When I started writing romance, it was something that I'd always wanted to do, you know, to be a writer. And it was my now husband who very firmly encouraged me to just do it. So when I wrote, I definitely had him in mind, because he and I have been together since I was 18. And I have always judged him by the standard of romance novels. And I've always been pleased with, you know, how how he came up. And so when I was writing love interests, I would think about him a lot and think about the way that I want to be treated and that I'm lucky enough to be treated. And I've always instinctively sort of woven that into my books. And I actually do see a lot of readers talk about men written by Talia Hibbert. And I like to make fun of my husband for it, because I'm like, "Do you know that you are a man written by Talia Hibbert?"
Anita Rao 46:03
I love that. As you enter this next chapter of your all's relationship, are there threads and questions that you're excited to unpack in your writing and in your characters?
Talia Hibbert 46:16
That's such an interesting question. I was not expecting marriage to feel like anything in particular, because we really did it to formalize a way that we already felt, you know. I have felt for a very long time that he is my family and marriage, I feel, makes that legal. And so I thought, it's not really going to be that different. And in many ways, it's not. But also, it's just a very interesting experience to know that you are legally intertwined with someone, because I feel like especially as a disabled person, as someone who is vulnerable and as someone who does need that level of interdependence, that requires a lot of trust. And I think that adds another depth to intimacy, as trust always must. And so I am interested to see if this influences my writing moving forward. And I have in the past not been particularly interested in books about married people, you know, people who are already together, with the exception of anything Kennedy Ryan writes. But I feel like that could change.
Anita Rao 47:28
I would love to end on talking about the other kinds of love that we have been threading throughout this hour, which is self-love and how writing can be a way of, of expressing love for yourself and finding the love that you have for yourself. How and when is writing a tool of self-love for you?
Talia Hibbert 47:47
I think because I really do love to write. And I also really do love to read. Writing is a tool of self-love for me when I'm able to craft something that is truly genuinely the kind of story that sparks joy for me. And that's easier said than done. It's obviously quite hard to write something that anyone enjoys. But I think putting in the perseverance to get there is self-love. Because sometimes working towards what you want is difficult, but you deserve the end result. And so you have to put the work in for yourself.
Anita Rao 48:31
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, a listener-supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast, consider a contribution at wunc.org now. Thank you again to our guests and a special shout out to Alice Wong for her contributions to today's show. We appreciate you. Check out more details on all of our guests and their written work in the shownotes. This episode was produced by Paige Miranda and edited by Kaia Findlay. Amanda Magnus is our regular editor, Jenni Lawson is our technical director and Quilla wrote our theme music. If you have thoughts after listening to this episode or a book recommendation - anything you want to share with us - we would love to hear it. Leave us a voicemail in our virtual mailbox SpeakPipr. Another great way to support us is by writing a review and letting us know why you listen. Do that on whatever app you're listening to this podcast on right now.
Until next time, I'm Anita Rao, taking on the taboo with you.