Q&A with Jacqueline Friedland

 

 

 

Jacqueline Friedland is the author of the new novel Counting Backwards. Her other books include He Gets That From Me. She lives in the New York City area.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Counting Backwards, and how did you research the novel?

 

A: Back in 1995, when I was a high school senior, my history teacher assigned a project requiring each student to choose any Supreme Court case from the early 1900s and write a big research paper about it. As I searched through old cases, nothing jumped out at me.

 

But then I stumbled upon the 1924 case of Buck v. Bell, where the Court examined the question of whether a teenage girl by the name of Carrie Buck should be subject to a sterilization procedure against her wishes.

 

Reading the case as a teenage girl myself, I couldn’t believe what our government had done to this young woman. The case stayed with me long after I finished that school project.

 

Now fast forward to 25 years later. It was 2020, and I was reading some random news website, when I noticed an article headlined “The Uterus Collector.” I immediately clicked on it, and saw that women in an immigration detention facility who were claiming they were being sterilized against their will.

 

Of course I thought right away of Carrie Buck. I couldn’t believe something so similar was being alleged nearly 100 years after Carrie’s case. I knew I had to spread the word, and that’s what inspired me to write Counting Backwards.

 

I jumped into the research right away. Refreshing myself on all the details surrounding Carrie’s case by reading old books and court documents. For the modern-day situation, I spoke to the reporter who first wrote about the allegations in Georgia. I also talked with detained immigrants, several immigrants’ rights organizations, as well as lawyers and law professors involved in defending immigrants.

 

Q: How did you create your present-day character, Jessa?

 

A: Having worked as an attorney in Manhattan myself, it wasn’t that difficult for me to imagine what Jessa’s life might be like professionally. Like me, she attended NYU Law School and then went off to work in a big corporate litigation firm.

 

Unlike me, Jessa was orphaned at a young age and raised by her grandmother. She was also an only child who’d longed for more family her whole life. She’s therefore particularly affronted when she thinks about women potentially being deprived of their right to have children.

 

I envisioned a young woman who felt very much alone but also discovered a connection with the clients she was trying to help and became driven to fight for those clients at all costs.

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: When she was a young girl and her parents were still alive, Jessa’s dad had a special way of making her feel confident. If she was ever nervous or hesitant about anything, like doing a dance recital or taking a test, her father would tell her to count backwards for 10. “And then, it’s showtime,” he’d say.

 

As an adult, Jessa is forced to confront so many challenging situations without her parents around to support her. However, when she remembers what her father used to tell her, it grounds her, reminds her to take a deep breath, and then to go for it.

 

In a book about women having to trust each other and take risks, I loved the idea of having the main character rely on this kind mantra just to help her climb over any obstacle.

 

The idea of counting backwards also resonated especially with me for this book because so much of this story is about history repeating itself. The idea of numbers being spoken in the wrong order or looking backwards, the chaos of that felt important. But so did the idea of taking control to say we are now making change.

 

Q: The writer Lisa Barr said of the book, “Fearlessly tackling the controversial and traumatic topic of eugenics, Friedland gifts readers with richly developed characters in a dual-timeline that explores fertility, inequality, and reproductive rights--both past and present with an eye toward the future.” What do you think of that description, and what do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I’m delighted with this description, as I think it hits the nail on the head for what this book is about. The excitement that surrounded the field of eugenics in the US back in the 1920s and ‘30s is both shocking and complicated.

 

It’s a topic that still warrants deep examination, but not without thinking about how much work we still have to do in contemporary society to safeguard the rights of women and those who are don’t conform to expectations.

 

The main things I hope readers take away from this book is that although progress isn’t always linear, women can be warriors and continue to fight for the treatment they deserve. Even if history does repeat itself in certain ways, we must learn from the cycles and figure out how to keep pushing forward.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on a super-top-secret contemporary story about a college athlete who makes a lot of very bad decisions. I’m having a blast with it and can’t wait to tell you all more about it.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Yes! As a writer, my main goal is always to take an important social justice topic and write about it in a way that’s accessible and engaging. That said, I write to entertain as much as to provoke.

 

So as Jessa and Carrie deal with big macro-level issues, their personal lives are often what shows up at center stage in the story of Counting Backwards. The novel is as much about the pressure we put on ourselves to do everything right, and how the implications of that can reverberate for generations as it is about how to make change.

 

I hope readers will keep up with me on my Instagram for book updates and more behind the scenes info about Counting Backwards. I always love hearing from readers, so please reach out!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Jacqueline Friedland.