The authors of I Came All This Way to Meet You and Manifesto discuss literary success and shame.
JAMI ATTENBERG:I thought I would feel that exact same way.
But I’m feeling a little vulnerable right now.
Jami Attenberg and Bernardine Evaristo.Credit: Illustration by NADZEYA MAKEYEVA for EW
Bernardine, you sound so much more confident than I do.
It’s so exhilarating.
EVARISTO:I was a very private person for most of my life, and I quite liked that.
‘Manifesto,’ by Bernardine Evaristo, and ‘I Came All This Way to Meet You,’ by Jami Attenberg.Grove Press; Ecco
I had to take responsibility for my choices.
As you reflect on your success in the memoirs, how do you define it?
What markers are important to you?
ATTENBERG:I felt successful once I didn’t have to have a day job anymore.
I was like, like let this book be the one.
EVARISTO:For me, the writing itself is a reward, but you also need a readership.
I wanted to win the Booker Prize.
ATTENBERG:You write a best-selling memoir.
Ride that rocket, baby.
A lot of times readers or critics can project authors onto their characters.
Does that happen to you, and do you think your memoirs will correct that narrative?
This false equivalency has always bothered me.
It can feel as if they’re saying I don’t have a good imagination.
I want people to appreciate that more.
I think the impulse comes after we have a degree of this thing we call success.
I also wanted my story, as a Black British woman specifically, to be out there.
Is there anything in your books that makes you nervous?
And until I was married, I did too.
I don’t like when things become part of the context of who I am.
ATTENBERG:No, we don’t.
But I couldn’t pretend to be anything other than what I am.
My sexuality is a part of me.
I wish I still had as much fun as I used to.
I was writing this book and thinking, “Damnit, I used to have a good time.”
Has examining your own lives changed what you want to write in the future?
My next book takes place over five decades.
It would be new territory for me, and I think it sounds really exciting.
