i've been waiting for this day

for quite a while since. last june, when anne's wonderful book came out and, i we were in d.c. together. i knew that i could bring her out to. for this book, lure her out here and actually lure her back because she here once before. and i think thousand and four, when i was editing story that she did one of the many amazing, fabulous stories that is written for the washington post over many years and. you know, summer is over and my wife and i are ready to bill

washington but sort of it's a ritual that i'll stay around for this book. first of all, for my friend conor moran used to run it and now jane rotondo, it's one of my favorite events. for those of you who don't know and how she's actually a legend in. the newspaper world. she won pulitzer prize in 2007 for her amazing stories on the mistreatment of veterans of the iraq afghanistan wars at walter army medical center, where she basically embedded herself in the hospital rooms with the soldiers and documented how they were being so shabbily treated. but, you know, she was also that story wonderful, but she wrote probably ten or 12 other stories that were equal or series that were equally great, of which were finalists for the pulitzer prize.

so, you know, that one story sort of gave the honor that she had deserved so many times before. and whenever would walk through the post newsroom, younger writers would circle around her because she just had such a aura of great writing her. and part of it is her ability to sort of insinuate herself into the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. nobody can quite capture. that was the the real sensibility, the humor the pathos, everything of real life. when you read that whole story, you just say, yeah, this is it. she captures it in a way that that most writers can't. and this memoir does that. you know, it's a memoir. her growing up as a tomboy in the orange groves of of florida, you know, sort of the last of those groves as he was approaching and pesticide rights

and family dysfunction and love and humor and questions of sexuality were all sort of whirling her so and welcome to madison. thank you, david. i just want to tell everyone i love it is the greatest town ever. super nice. i love cheese curds. so i'm very old fashioned. last night. yeah. i'm really thankful to be here. so thanks thanks for having me. so let's just start with a portrait of that time and place which you capture when you're like six years old in the orange groves of of florida. what was what was the feeling of that? well you know, florida is really three different states. it's north florida central florida and south florida. people also. it was a confederate state during the civil war. and the north part of florida is known more leaning toward the confederacy in the middle part

has some leanings also. so, you know, it was a very toned society. there were whites and there were blacks. everyone had their roles. it was a cracker society. they it you know, it's old for floridians who came and they call themselves white settlers but actually they weren't settler was because the indians had settled it. you know tens of thousands of years previously. the land was taken from them and they were shipped off to oklahoma. so yeah, there was just the government was desperate for people to settle wild place. and so my family there in the 1870s, 1860s and started citrus groves and that's kind of where i grew up was orange groves and it's hard to if people don't believe that that could have been there at this time because florida is so overbuilt so trashy it's just a florida that's you know not recognizable so. yeah i had a really freeing childhood.

it was, you know, barefoot mosquito trucks, lakes. it was just an untouched part of florida at that time. and then this book kind of on when a theme park was in progress there. and growing up under the shadow of that theme park and what it did to florida, the people who live there on page page five of this book, right at the beginning, there's this fabulous summary paragraph, it's not the sort of paragraph that and usually writes, but it's terrific. and then that or several more. any of sentences but i wanted to read that just to give people flavor of it. one paragraph. no, the whole thing. if the history of central florida were charted out on a graph, it would start with primordial and then curve towards the paleo indians, the calusa indians, the toka, baga indians, ponce de leon, runaway slaves snuff dipping, white settlers. the u.s. army, osceola, the

great seminole warrior, malaria, cattle, citrus and adult that left it undesirable for much side oranges until. the 1960s, when walt took a plane ride over the vast emptiness, looked down and said, there the interior central florida was so desolate, my father kept a gallon of water and a box of saltines in his car. he said, you eat it all the oranges wanted, but good luck if you needed a flush toilet or a payphone. he also said it was no place for a child, though disney was betting otherwise. florida's other citrus growing region was much smaller. east of the rich along the coast and. it was called indian river. the indian river. people did a better job. their fruit rhapsodizing tidal indian breezes that rang poetry in the yankee ear. their fruit was prettier to look at because each piece of fruit was buffed out to the shine of a cadillac on the ridge. we didn't mind if an orange left

your hands dirty as long you strip down your chin. plus, we had more groves wall to wall looking out. my father's, i was seeing things i would never again. places that weren't even on maps where the sky disappeared and the radio went dead. whole towns were entombed in spanish moss with gnarled branches of live oaks and blackjacks strangling other in the titanic darkness. we rumbled past old pioneer settlements, rotting in the humidity. black creeks wound like snakes, birds, their skeletons, birds spread skeletal wings but never flew just when it seemed we may never see daylight again, the road depositors deposited us into blinding sunlight. you know, the next author, david von daly, could answer this question to it. it's really not a fair question. but what makes florida so weird.

there are many theories. there have been academic papers, some there's too much skin. you know, you go into publix store and a woman is in a thong bikini long as she has shoes on, it's just a free for all. it's where people can let their hair and that is for good, for bad. i think a casual place. and that also adds to a lack of decorum and it's a good time place which adds to, you know, a bar every other block. it is weird. i can't explain the weirdness of it. you know, there's a reason there's florida man and there's a florida woman. so it's all built on that. there's also repression. yeah, well, yes. now, is, you know, the tolstoy cliche is that all happy families are alike. every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. reading book, you seem to carve a fairly happy childhood out a

dysfunctional family. you know, there wasn't really happy. and so, so much of the book is by your father and your mother. let's start with your dad and his struggles, frustrations and how he worked it. my father was a fourth generation floridian. this citrus growing family in a place called it's their own settlement really called hopewell. they named it. they're all very cane backed baptist. no cussing, no dancing, no music, not even at church. and so that was the background. my dad came from. he was different in that he went to florida state university, where met my mother. he was a reader, loved steinbeck, he loved faulkner, and he was really too for the citrus business because a very, very hard business physically and mentally. and the stress is always there. but he wanted to carry forward what his family was in and had lost his own dad in high school. so wanted to go into citrus and carry the line forward really.

and so he did something. he shouldn't have done it. and he became a fish. he was a pesticide, a seller you know, he went around and sold pesticides and he became a fruit buyer and he climbed up and up, up. but he was yeah, was just too gentle for for the era he lived in and for the job that he found himself in. i love that that someone called your mother or compared it to elizabeth taylor on cat on a hot tin roof. my mother was from brooklyn. yeah. so you can say she she also kind of reminded me of bill clinton's mother, virginia kelly, in the way that she would spend hours with makeup and all of that. but wasn't a southerner. she was. she was. how did she end up in florida in that life of the orange groves? yes. so my mother and my grandmother actually was kind of a rich person from providence, rhode, and they lived on a trust fund. my grandmother was married to a ne'er do well irishman who

didn't work. he lived off the trust fund, which was enormous because they were spending the principal down every month. and he was psychic, you know, who wanted to devote his time to psychometrics. so anyway, there their oldest boy at 16 became sick. he had cancer, and it was clear that he was he had surgeries and it was clear he was going to die. and so my grandmother, who doesn't even drive, drove packed. the three kids in the car. my mom included, and the other brother, and they spent their time going from california. they went to cuba, they went to mexico, wherever the fish were they went. so that percy the youngest or the oldest boy with cancer could could fish and the last town they ended up in where, he died was saint petersburg, florida and you'd be surprised many people end up in central florida or, saint petersburg with those of stories and my mother was a spanish. she went to did summers in

mexico and, guatemala. she was very dramatic she was very heavy in high school. and she was on every student council president. one debate contests, all that stuff. but she could never get a date because was so heavy and so third year at florida state. i think she lived on grapefruit, cigarets and coffee and became a beautiful woman. and that's the one. my my dad met her and they got married a year later and she she was a woman was far too large for the little towns we lived in. you know, she would walk into the grocery store was like a broadway entry. so yeah, she was a lot of makeup and so you meet not a lot of makeup, so but she never pressured me. but i always felt like the subtle pressure of, oh, god, am i going to have do all of that? so knowing your father and your

mother what what are the characteristics that you have that come from either one of them? would you say insecurity come from both. yeah, i think that's a good question. watching we we love to watch people rather than with people. we would my dad and i, there was a big murder trial sebring, florida, when we lived there. a really rich son of a citrus baron, maxey jr was murdered in his home and the media from all over the country came in this have been in 1967. and so all newspapermen were in town and. my dad and i went to little gilbert's drugstore to watch them do thing. they had paths. they were credible, incredibly smoking, putting their cigarets out in the ashtray. and i thought these amazing people, you know, they had they so important to my dad, who should have been a newspaper reporter of some sort. we just watched them for hours. and i think that's really what i get get it from my dad. it's great.

you know, every memoir in some sense is a relies on memory. it's an archeological dig. i mean, you can have documents, but so much of is from memory. what was the process you to put this book together like that? well, as a journalist, it was extremely to accept the fact that i always make mistakes and not everything would be true. that was difficult for me to kind of and didn't embrace it, but i just had to live with it. at first. i did lot of research and that was my kind, easy go to fallback thing. i know to do that. i spent a lot of time in moldy libraries in central florida looking at the bound newspaper. you know, i could research my family really well and. luckily, i had a lot of tapes of my parents talking and their writing because they wrote everything down so but still, a six year old can't remember everything. that's in this book. and so where as i have a quote from my dad, chapter one, when

i'm six, it was something he said in his last year of life when i was recording him because. i can't no one can remember what what people say. so yeah, it was was difficult to know that i'd make some mistakes and some things wouldn't be true. and it's my memory. so it's bound to be a little warped. well, i would argue that that memoir a larger truth than the you know whether the quote is quite what it was said when you were years old. but you know you also had these two there's so many colorful characters in the book and especially two grandmothers who were quite different big. nancy and davey, tell about those two. one was incredibly southern as an incredibly southern just, you know, she she a daughter of the confederate. she went to proms at age 65, just she was actually a really fine piano player. and she was not realize self

realized. that's kind of a theme in this book. everyone's not realized to their kind of potential and you know she would come to my house as a kid and she'd take over my bedroom and she'd have these hairbrushes and comb set big violins shalamar, you know, she was just a lady. and my other grandmother, the one who was on the trust front fund from, providence, rhode island, she was just wacky, you know, she never never learned to drive. she loved tarot cards. she loved. she went to a buddhist temple. she worked at the library very, very, very eccentric. and she she was one of those girls. she went to sort of finishing school in the early 1920s. so everything she said was like, darling tomato, you know, and that was really exotic and she was faking it. but i guess i didn't see it as faking it. so these two women were really important figures in my life. one, i didn't want to be in one.

i was cool with being. he was the one you were cool with being. and she you too. she did, you know. yes the grandmother thing. she was great. and she rode busses around saint pete all the time, not driving. and so she would go to shopping downtown every day with a parasol, you know, and yeah, she was just kind of magical. but she also took you to see jackson? yes. that's that's interesting story. and i'll i'll share this with you and c-span, i guess when my mom and dad split up. my mom, my father sort of in a quick way. and so we got all our stuff out and we're gone in a matter of a day. and we went to my grandmother's. and so about a year things were really, really we didn't we didn't have any money. my mom didn't have any money. we were use clothes, you know. yeah. public health clinics and i love them. the jackson five and so the jackson were coming to to tampa which is across the bay from

from saint petersburg and my grandmother knew how much i loved them and she spent the money for our electric bill on the concert. and she had a saying she she would always say as an saying, oh, darling, chicken today, feathers tomorrow. so we went to the we went to the concert. there was some question whether i could include that scene in the book because of michael jackson's legacy now and, i really pushed to keep that in because. it was very important to like my childhood you know, and so i had a lot todd brewster questions, some at the publishing house. you i also learned tomboy is not really anymore and it's true i checked the girl scouts of america and they're they're saying we shouldn't say it anymore either so well you've never been afraid of saying things. no, i'm not afraid to say it. it's it's it shows you the in

this is true in journalism to the the sensitivities have to be observed these days. they're very difficult, especially when you want to talk about the past and when you're braided into the past. so it's really difficult. i find it really difficult in journalism as well. so my next question was going to that word, which i now can't say tomboy, but i don't think the audience. but i mean, you what's a better word now? i'd be happy for suggestions. i mean, it implies, i guess, that a girl who is athletic or, you know, doesn't wash has not seen her hair, is or a six year old who doesn't wear shirt. yeah. and a six year old doesn't wear a shirt that that be boy behavior and there's there's no we shouldn't look at gender that way we better stop this right now. i mean it's hard to get there because i mean whatever that was that was you as a as a little girl right, right?

i mean, tell them what you love to do. mean you're you play in the creeks. you play the boys. yeah. yeah. i was, you know, fixated on spy paraphernalia. and so i order stuff from every cereal box company in the world and have all this stuff, and i'd be spying on people with my with my telescope hanging out with the boys there was a funny face was a kind of poor man's kool aid back in the sixties funny face soft drink or whatever and they would have it was a powdered drink mixed with water and they had a contest that the the boys would win this tent red, white striped tent. and the girls won doll collection. so i entered as andrew hull and i got a tent. so yeah, that's the kind of yeah. and it was kind of heartbreaking when my mother said i had to wear shirt, you know, because i was six years old, you know, i was 11. i could see that. but when did you start to the

connection between that impulsive sexuality. that's hard to say because i know plenty of girls who lived like me and aren't gay. you know, they were tomboys and they did all this stuff. they didn't become lesbian. i don't really know. i'm not sure if there's a if a tie between that behavior approach to childhood and becoming a lesbian. but i didn't notice it. i thought was kind of weird. like when i was 12 and i would go to the store where they had fake mermaids that would talk to you topless mermaids. and i would just like, wow, that's kind of weird. i keep going back here. and then like, you know, carly simon's came out, no secrets and, if anyone you remember that it said she's. yeah, she's she's great, right? and and i would go to the record store and just keep looking at that record cover, you know, and i that's when i knew, like hmm. and then was herb alpert's.

yeah. herb alpert and the tijuana brass. do you remember the whipped cream? little hints like that. how hard was it for you to come out and how did that process? well it didn't really come out per. se like my first journalism just goes to say that, yeah, no, it's true. i, i didn't tell people for a while at my first job. maybe, i don't know, three or four years, but then and everyone, i think i grew up in a really safe atmosphere, in a newspaper, in a newsroom which really allows for, you know, characters, people to be accepted. and i think that's where i became comfortable enough to just sort of be who i am now. i never in the job ever told anyone i was gay and that because i didn't if it to do with the story, especially i wrote a series about gay kids in the bible belt coming out and never. i spent months reporting and i

didn't tell the mom and the son that i was gay because i didn't want this is really, again, different from where journalism is going. i just didn't want it to stilt the way they saw me or think that i see their story faster than. they would. so it's it's a weird thing. you're kind of you know, i always say to my straight reporter friends they could going to the prison to interview someone on death row and just to have to establish rapport. they say i was late with my kids at the school bus this morning or whatever my wife is, whatever. guess i could say that now too. but for years i couldn't. and, you know, it's it's it is hard to to sort of about it. you kind of leave a big from your life and then you do these gymnastic eyes which are so ridiculous now, you know, now that i see it like what? like, like not you know, not at least a little bit about my life because i was one of those old schoolers who just didn't share anything, partially maybe because i was hiding my --.

well, i don't know any reporter who is better at sort of insinuating themselves, ingratiating, but in an honest way for people to just talk to you. i mean, you can get to talk to you. i was talking to this graduate journalism school, berkeley last week, and they were. but some of stories i did a lot of stories. people who support abortion, you know, anti-gay people, all this stuff. and they go, but how you not be your true self and tell them they were so wrong and like, gosh, i just don't i'm here to hear what they you know, i'm not there to judge them really foreign concept to anyone under 30 in journalism right now. you know so yeah no but you're the best at that thank you and and would rather you know you have journalists brag about their expensive counts you know in going rome or somewhere and eating at the finest restaurants and what's wrote me about how she was in a motel eight eating

cheetos in kansas or. that's heaven to me being in it being out in the country like that and having the privilege to report, i just loved it. it was so exciting. yeah, it's great. and another important thread, in my opinion, that runs through your book, which is in a sense is race. you know, you had your family had a black maid collar and your dad worked with a manager of the grove's booker. it how did that affect you and what did you see as a girl with that with race florida at that time, being a five year old, six year old kid, you're not really thinking those terms. but my working women in sebring, florida in the sixties, up until the late sixties, were schoolteachers, of which my mother was one, and those were the women in town who work. the rest were at home. so we did have someone to come in and watch my brother and i after school or him was sola. it wasn't extravagant. you, you know, like made as a as

a is a bad word in every way but it suggests someone has a lot of money and we were just kind of a middle class family but she was like yeah she was probably way maternal than my own mother. and i loved it a just loved her to pieces and she was super, super important person to me. and, and at that time now it's mostly latin who work in the groves picking oranges, citrus and. at that time it was predominantly black or a little white and just starting with hispanics. and it gradually. but that was the power structure. i mean don't you didn't really think about it. you think about it when we moved to a new place, second grade plant city, florida, which is i was born more kind of sebring, was developed by midwesterners. plant city is really really southern. that's where my dad's from there really felt the the the the

racial divide and the racism and the comments it just it was really blatantly different. there. yeah. daughters of confederacy cookbooks, black kids just you know schools were just integrating then, but they were made fun of. it was just terrible. really terrible. so as i got older and i in that environment, i really, really didn't like it. and my favorite show at the time was mod squad, you know, because linc and peggy and just they were in there, thighs were touching in the car, you know, and it was just like no one would allow their kid to watch mod squad with a black detective. you know the jackson five of the mod squad. i guess i have a thing. there's a pattern that. great. you know, all are especially memoirs, but all books are based on choices. you know what? you live in? what? where you stop, where you start. how did you decide to limit the

book to a certain part of your life? and then sort of tag at the end of the rest of it? yeah, i intended stop at age 13 or something, but my, my, the woman who represents me in the book stuff, tina bennett, who's is the reason this book became finished, said how she went along with this for a little while. but how do you write about your eventual -- addressing it before time? because you really you really kind of know, or at least i did. and so to be honest about it, tina, we have to kind of have you as an adult. how did you how did you turn out and address that? you know, and so when my father died and this is in the book, i have one brother. we're really close. and my dad died in plant city place, and we all it was a outside grave burial and we're all holding hands. maybe people under the tent,

live oaks, you know, tons of moss. anyway, we're all holding hands and the preacher says, dear lord, we'd to pray for for john's daughter's homosexuality. weep. we hope she gets through it just like i looked at my brother. but that's. that wasn't too long ago, you guys. so it's just the kind of b because i'm so like, don't want cause a fuss and like, thank you for your pastor. you were a little bit as strange, but your father was just good for a part of your life. what was that like for you and how did you sort of finally come back together? yeah, it's one of those, you know, the righteousness of youth i was mad at dad for a long time for leaving my mother. so really in a bad way. financial i was probably really upset that my father left, but i took it out on my father and we didn't talk for years.

and then we started to get have contact again. he yeah. and he was kind of out of the picture. living flophouses, working in fruit factories in texas. and then we finally kind of slowly came together. but when we started closer to my in my mid-twenties, i still was too chicken to tell him i was gay because he is so southern and i would just try it. i had the keys ready. i was going to get in my car. okay dad's like, oh, now's the time but i never could. and that says probably more about me than it says about him. so when did you tell him and how did that? i think i wrote. yeah. yeah. and then he he wrote something back saying some as they age become more conservative, some become more tolerant. not mono. my favorite words by the and so he says you know i'm growing more mellow and gentle and i think that was his way to say you can tell me and how about your mother how did she

responded how did you tell. let's just put it this way, there was some abc movie of the week on. she was a schoolteacher and all our teachers had. it's a gay movie, you know, vickie, you've got to watch this. she has. i've lived that hell. you know, she just she was fine. she was, of course worried as most parents that their child might live a hard and it is a harder life. and that's what she was concerned about. the rest didn't. it was no problem. and drag queens love my mother because she's so made up. you. so she was. yeah. she was. yeah. fine. well, just drag queens. i mean, from the book and from everything you've told me, your mother was beloved. she was beloved. one of those rare people, you know, most most people say everyone loved my mom. they really did. she was unusual force life. you know, she was a school principal. very funny, very dramatic, very such a good friend to people. and. yeah, and so she she. am i supposed to say all these

things like you're things that happen. yeah. that. you, you're going to by the book anyway. right. don't worry it. yeah. so she so yes. i'm supposed to tell them that, that the what about it. even more so anyway yeah. my is a super my grandmother was very close to my mom was had a massive on our school lunch break and died when she was 56. yeah and that was that was really, really. yeah. and you were not there when it happened? yeah. i was living in, in cambridge on a fellowship and so i had to go and yeah it was, it was, yeah. it was really hard. and as my first xanax i ever took and last but it was, yeah, it was a huge hole. it was, it you know, just i think especially when you don't have kids it kind of, it, it means you're kind of the last of it.

so it's extra hard. you used the word realization earlier about people and that was true of your mother, too, right? i mean, she had she worked she was a school principal. she had realized a lot. yet there were several sort frustrations in her life about, what she wanted to be versus what she was. i think that was true, especially on. but as she went on, as she that her middle school, they always put in the really toughest middle schools, tough, bad neighborhoods because could turn schools around and. she became she that was her broadway stage when she went to school in the morning she did the announcements that the kids really liked her and that was her that was her stage. and i think she was at peace with that at the end. tell a couple stories about your your mother and her friends. i love the one where they all pile into the car, drive up to go shopping. oh, yeah. so see ring florida was not really it really in the middle

of nowhere and all the schoolteacher sort of been in the mid sixties they would pile into the car on saturdays and go to tampa which was like a 65 mile drive and they'd go shopping because you couldn't buy much in sebring. and i would go a couple of times this before i started first grade. and, you know, these women were like talking about and, you know, they were holding up bras and they were they just love shopping. they went to chinese restaurants. they were just different people. that's how i knew them as these kind of wild card ladies, you know, with pedicures and thongs and. and then then when i went to first grade, mrs. carlton, joan was right here. i'm like, hi, joan, you know, is mrs. carlton, you know, but. but you realize i did a sense these women had separate lives from from their husbands and their children and their roles as schoolteachers. so and my mother being from brooklyn we would she would pilot in the car and we'd to lakeland which was another hour drive so she'd get chunking frozen egg rolls at ten at night

if she had a craving so so yeah she found ways to live around that. well she wanted to be a cook. she was a wonderful wonderful cook. yeah. especially exotic foods which in florida would have been chinese. yeah, yeah, yeah. i mean she was one of those people who made salty auto for thanksgiving. it was like, can't you please make a turkey. you know? yeah. she's a fabulous cook. yeah yeah. you know, every book has a certain after effect of people that you who've read the book who you heard from ever before or from a long time ago, what was that sort of like? you and this was such a personal story. people in florida, particularly connect to. yeah, it's really hard because i'm someone who's only written one newspaper story, maybe two in 30 years with the word i. so was very, very hard for me in some ways to get that voice to to say all these things. and it was also very weird for

me to do social media for the first time. i've on social media as a reporter know how to get around it that way. but terms of posting things, you kind of have to do it these days and that's been really uncomfortable. but all these people who knew my mom they're i'm getting pictures from people just all sorts people have come out of the woodwork and it's it's been really, really fun, really a beautiful experience. i keep waiting for a lawyer, and that hasn't happened yet. so because of just you never know. you know, you never know. well, we're going to take some questions from the audience, so get ready for that while you do that. and i'd love for you to just talk a little about your reporting sort of philosophy. mean, i know you talk to younger reporters about how you do it. tell us little bit about that. yeah, i mean, there's no i didn't go to journalism school. i go to college much, really. anything. i just started working in a newsroom at the st petersburg times when i was 19 as a copy

kid, and i happened to work at the times a few times when it was this incredibly great newspaper, it was one of the top ten in the country and. so the great writers were at that weirdo little town, st petersburg, and i kind of did what they did, which was kind of a documentary style reporting. it's it's it's saying very little as reporter and just watching the action unfold. you know, you you you just you watch and watch and watch. you don't interrupt someone. you don't ask question because you're interrupting whatever you might be hearing. you're their action. and so it's really like you hear a fly the wall. but that's really, really kind of the way i go about my reporting. i, i spend a lot of time doing that. and so that's how you get lot of good stuff because the more time you spend with someone, the more stuff you get. and then if you have questions, you know, i'm keeping a of questions on the side that's. that's kind of how it goes. i mean, yeah, i mean, the best thing that this is how this is my dream as a reporter.

i was doing a story on part of gay series. there was a a young black lesbian from newark, jersey, named so she had done sushi, a gun, and she was stabbed to death at a bus stop in newark because a man came on to her and. she said, no, thank you, whatever. and was killed. and so i did a story on what it's like to be gay. and they're very masking and presenting girls, very butch girls. the old terms they call. yeah, they're super. they were boy clothes. they look like boys. and even after six years murder they continued to like that and be themselves which i just thought god, that's so that's so much more braver than could ever drum up at that age. and so i hung around these kids one lived in. yeah, lived in newark, which is a very tough town. there's a lot of crime there. there's no money and. so one night we went to a gay club, a teen gay club, and it was mostly black kids, but black lesbians. and so it was winter.

and like missy elliot, like, shaking the nightclub. and i walk in and felicia is the girl i'm portraying felicia. some all the kids say, who's that? like, what's a lady doing here that age and felicia goes, that's nobody. that's an and that's the kind of thing you want to be as a reporter. that is heaven is the sweet spot when you're just they don't even pay attention to you. and for the walter reed story, it's true that you slept overnight with with a guy. it is his wife not in this together but yet yet but but you spent you you were able i mean you go from these tough gay girls in newark to to this you know it wounded soldier and convince them all that you're that's just it. well i. i did that story with dana priest. he's one of the best investigative national security reporters of her generation.

and she's the kind of the she's asked me to do it. and because i my thing, it's watching people. so we went that whole thing about walter reed is we went there without the permission of the army and the army or the department defense, the branches of the service. we still of obey the rules. there aren't many things left where we say, okay, i go through the public officer. we just always do that. and if you don't do it, they get really mad. but we didn't. we circumvent. adam and that's how we got into that too, to reed i mean if it does anyone know what hipa is like the privacy law. so at the guard shack at walter reed, they can't ask, who are you going to see? they ask you, where are you going? and so there was no lying know involved in the whole thing and that we just yeah, we worked the outside in the inside. some of the wives are really mad that husbands were still in a hotel in walter reed base for two years. their paperwork lost. i mean, it was just really a hellish, hellish situation. the medical care.

okay, it was pretty good. it's just guys were hanging around for two years, lost limbo. so, yes i would spend the night in the hotel rooms because most of them have very bad ptsd. and so they they usually wake up in the morning, often with a start or violently. and i was like this guy named dell, who was an older guard member, and he from south carolina and he had bad ptsd and his wife was living in the hotel room with him there at walter reed. and she told me that she would never go wake him up in the morning with her hands. she would throw a shoe at him because you just didn't know what would happen. and i could have written that. but i really needed to see that. and that's kind of how uncovered that story we had to see everything with our own eyes, which is really what you hope for in every story. but it's not always possible. but then we could say with 100% clarity, she uses a shoe, wake him up. when i saw it a few times and dylan and let you do it.

yes, they did. you know that we came started our walter reed reporting in 2007. and that was a time the war had dragged on a lot longer than it was supposed to. you people were losing you. this was before the surge. so it was just at a point where when is this going to end? and the military was busy with the war. they really neglected walter reed and taking care of the wounded soldiers there. and so the the base would lose walter reed would lose their paperwork which sounds like a really small thing, but it's not in the system and you're pretty well screwed if lose your paper, you have to start back over, get getting a leg and the wives went to office depot and they bought printing copy machines for the rooms and they started making copies of the records. so they'd always have the records. and they were so mad that the army mistreating their husbands, it mostly, mostly wives and husbands that they're like we'll talk to you this is this is he does not deserve this kind of treatment he lost an eye he's

got traumatic brain injury. so we were really helped in the timing the reporting in that the wives ready to talk. well, i can tell you that editing and which is really easy was one of the great joys of my career at the post. but let's get back to the book and it takes some questions from the audience. is there a microphone that people are supposed to talk into? oh, over there, yes. do you see? yeah. no, there. oh, yeah. thank you. talk about. if we can see you. yeah. yeah. and i'm curious, have you attended any of your high school reunions and what was your experience when you went back? that's a great question. no, i haven't. that's really that's really a great question. yeah i don't know why i haven't done it.

yeah, i don't know. well, you must know. well, i was just. i mean, i could, i could kind of picture it right. and saw the pictures on facebook for one. and it's like i don't want to see. they're also old, which means i'm also old. you know, but yeah. no, i don't know. i haven't, i haven't done that was next. so. but please. so you've told us a little bit about you only wrote two stories with eye in them before and as a journalist you're you're so used to being the observer pulling yourself out of it, making kind of these beautiful stories out other people's lives. i still want to hear more about how you decided to write this book about yourself. and as i'm reading it, there's there's so many beautiful moments that. might not be like your mom died. like i think you would it on. but when you went to the the gas station with your dad and that

was just such a beautiful personal moment. how do you how did you decide write this story about yourself and in this way? and was it hard? was there a moment you said, i want to do this? it was hard. yeah. it took a long time. i wanted to this is a terrible kind of reason i wanted to. yeah. leave something in the in it in a time machine or. a time bottle. about this time in florida. it's a time that is, it's vanish. it's gone now. and this family vanished with that time was my family for a while. and i think i also had the impetus because. i had kind of cut my father off for so many years that i wanted to remember him and know him and. yeah, it was i think it was a way to back in a way. and i did feel sorry for for my parents and i felt sorry for myself that they were both gone. but it it's a, it's a dialect, it's a way of living that is just really, if not extinct on

verge of extinction. and i wanted to preserve that and within, of course, is this family that kind of did not work. this wasn't a motivator, but wasn't another root of this story that you, for the new yorker about the strawberry fest, all of plant city, the winter capital of the winter, strawberry capital of the world, and this is where, you know, i was born. my dad was from soup or baptist very southern gender is very strict. you know, i got put in tap dance lessons when i was a kid there, but the place unnerved me and. i could barely go back there as an adult as a person with a job and a car because i was so intimidated by. those women, you know, they were just made up all the time, bless your heart. and they're like, you, you know what they're in. and i so i basically i couldn't go back there by myself. so i, i did a story, the new

yorker on this ritual, hung on for, you know, 70 years old. now it's the town picks. it's an agricultural queen, the strawberry queen and her court members. and in a place like plant city, literally royalty, you're still given a fur coat in florida, you know, a free and you're just you're just royalty and i wanted to go back to that town and it's like going to the belly of the beast. but i had to have a notebook in front of me. i couldn't done it. i couldn't have done it by myself. and yeah. and so that's that was kind of the start of all this. and those girls, they were big hair. the five girls really, sweet girls, but just seeing them, it's like, god, it was the ghost past the people that haunted me, you know? and they're here. they are. they're nice. they're nice kids. anyway, so that's. that's why i decided to do it. and after that i started thinking, wow, this is a this i need to. i to go back and look look further on this and now had the kind of courage to do it.

i think so many of us from the north traveling to florida, one of the last thing are the fruit stands. you know, indian, whatever is grove. it doing the river oranges and and you're description of your family's your relatives fruit stand is glorious to tell us about it was like yeah that we had a fruit stand. my aunt dot ran it on the edge of our groves that my family only owned. maybe acres which which is nothing compared to corporate citrus growing. but it was enough to send your kid to college you know it was it was good and my aunt dot was another woman she fancied herself an artist. and she was a pretty good folk art painter. so she opened up fruit stand on on the highway at the edge of our groves. and that was her broadway stage. she was a very strict baptist, but she wore red lipstick to the fruit. she loved dealing with the tourists lucille ball came in

one day and it was just this wider. was a picture into a wider world because that's how florida is they're bringing where wherever they're from, they're they're bringing it with them. and we get to see that it was a real. that's how they live. you know, i was in in berlin, germany for a while. i was asked to to lunch by a woman was the wife of like a count or a king or something. count a fun, fun. somebody really house. so i go to her house. she was from ohio and she had married a german guy and. i walk in to this house. it's incredible. we have for lunch broiled grapefruit. it's like all the food from florida. i'm like, first of all, it was just so beautiful but she had so many memories of being a kid in ohio and all her brothers and sisters packing up into the station wagon with pillows and pajamas and driving to florida. and i, i, i always forget how for generations it's, a really

important place in the story of people's childhoods and the great sort of depiction of parents and children stumbling out of their cars after the long drive from wisconsin or michigan. you know, so dazed with their. i love that. yeah, it was it was i mean, in the springtime, i don't know if anyone's ever smelled real blossoms, but when are, you know, hundreds of miles trees. it's it's just intoxicating. you know, i think i say in the book it's literally the smell burned into my hair and to the dog's fur. it was so fragrant. you. and they're also processing oranges. so it's kind of a you know, when they're cooking them down, it's like a brown sugar smell. so it's it's an unusual place. and there aren't those groves there anymore, you know, that there are. i don't know how many are left, but in the last 15 years, there's been a virus called. citrus greening trust asia. it's a borne virus that, kills trees. and if one has it all, the large perimeter around them have to be

bulldozed because it just spreads. and, you know, they're working to figure out how to beat. university of florida has done the best work on it, but there won't be any citrus groves left in florida, i think, in 20 years. really. you know, there's other figure in your book who who lived where you lived, which is your brother who over the course of the book has two different names. but tell us about about dwight jim he yeah he was an annoying three year old you know, three years younger than i was. and was always enjoying himself or sticking a dime in his ear. we always had go to the emergency room. he was super annoying and he was very tall, very awkward, and when my parents when my mom left, my father, my mother in her 1970s psychology, thought that my brother dwight should be called something else too. so we have the memory of the past. so we all sat around. we were at my grandmother's, you know, mom, me, my grandmother,

and my dwight. and we're all, like, suggesting names. and my brother is carlos, you know, and it's like, anyway, we were his first name is james, so we went to james. so that's his name yet? yeah. and he was a great, great help on this book because his memory is much sharper than mine. and he was close my father, the entire time that i wasn't but siblings never have the same of specific events. do i mean did you disagree or did he argue with you about this? isn't the way it happened or. yeah, there's a scene in the in the scene that drives family apart. it involves a gun and my father was drunk and we were in the car and he pulled out a gun. and so my brother doesn't remember the gun. i was in the front seat and my brother remembers being very scared and crying. he doesn't remember a gun. so i remember the gun. so we talked that and i

actually, you know, some terror. who wrote educated? she of did a more detailed explanation of how she got what information how certain siblings disagreed with her version of things. i not to do that but he helped me i had to stick with that scene even though he doesn't remember it the way i do. what was the what do we take out of that scene with the gun? i mean, what was your father going to do? yeah, he was. he was drunk, but he had driven us, you know, an hour in the car, my brother and i, to go check on the groves in the saturday. we always went to the groves on saturdays and he was drunk and he pulled out the gun from glove box. it was loaded and he wasn't going to shoot us. he was just i don't bringing it out. my brother, you know, i my dad is like, what are you doing in my brother's? and my brother said, because we were never supposed to touch the my brother goes, is there a bad man?

because only bring the gun out for a bad man and my dad said, no, no, son. and that kind of broke my father and he just like threw gun up there and vomited out of the car and that kind of thing. but yeah, speaking bad men or that sort of spooky there's again you're away something for the book but i love the you end it sort of running towards away from something or towards something in the end of the book. yeah yeah yeah because. my family's groves these ones that i write about are hardly anymore. they've been bulldozed and family rents out the land for strawberry growing now. but see this place i go look at it after. i hadn't seen it for a while. and it's bright's and the groves were always cool and full of shadows, magical. and it's just to me bloodedly. i could see the clothes line with the clothes like, you know, the distance, and you could never see that.

and as much as i didn't want to be from that place, i was really sad to not those orange groves. it was really killing that they weren't there because. it implied i wouldn't be there or my family wouldn't be there or our memories or my memories would cease to exist someday. any more questions? the audience? yes. good. why don't you line both of you? make it easier so we don't have to wait around. it sounds like you've got some great settings and great character throughout the book. when you decided to write a memoir is there something about your life or some lessons that you had learned that you wanted to share or some experiences from your life that shaped you. in looking back on life now you see how you've changed.

is there something like that you wanted to share? i guess for like the of i should have for sales stuff. i just never thought i just wanted to write it, you know, it, it was so i can't explain that it was not calculated. i probably should have been a little more calculated. you know, it's when i lived, my partner's german. so when we lived in when we were in berlin to tell a german that you're writing a memoir were memoirs not as common? they're any stretch. and they go, but what did you like? i should be an astronaut to be writing a memoir, you know, and i'm like, oh, my parents divorced her, you know. but yeah, i just don't know. it was something i just had to write and i, i, i hope maybe if other girls like me read it, they'll feel kind of less alone and they can refuse. clairol kindness rollers. but. it's about home, i guess. the home us that disappears and is transitory that's a great

answer yeah and the way in writes there's a deeper lesson that it's almost ineffable but it has to do with a sensibility so you feel it when you're reading it which is much more powerful than just you know a clichéd saying on a wall or something of what what your life should be. so thank you very much. thank you everyone, thank you so much.

please join me in welcoming to the stage schuyler bai