Melissa Fraterrigo is the author of the new book The Perils of Girlhood: A Memoir in Essays. Her other books include Glory Days. She is the executive director of the Lafayette Writer's Studio in Lafayette, Indiana.
Q: What inspired you to write The Perils of Girlhood?
A: Deborah, thank you for asking! I am a fiction writer by trade. My first two published books, the novel Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press, 2017) and the collection of short stories The Longest Pregnancy (Livingston Press, 2006), were firmly rooted in the imagination, but after drafting a YA novel and being unable to find a home for the manuscript, I felt tired.
It was the pandemic and my classes were all online, my daughters were attending school on Zoom, and the short story I had been drafting could not hold my attention. I became more fixated on stories of the real--what can only transpire in the true and honest voice of a life.
Scott Russell Sanders’ Under the Influence, which explores the legacy of his father’s alcoholism, was wrought with detail in a way that made me feel as if I were right there, cowering alongside him.
My own temper seemed thin in a new way and at times I’d lash out at my daughters. I became hyper aware of myself and at the same time, I’d find my preteen daughters complaining about their bodies, and I began to think about how I might help them navigate their own girlhoods.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: It’s funny--the title came to me pretty quickly in that it was taken from the one of the earliest essays I drafted, “The Perils of Girlhood,” and yet as my idea for the book expanded, the doubts crept in.
The first few essays of the book were situated in my childhood and adolescence, and I fixated on the importance of creating an atmosphere of a 1980s and 1990s girlhood. By noting lyrics from Madonna songs and references to movies like Sixteen Candles and Revenge of the Nerds as well as books by Judy Blume, I could pin the reader to this place and time.
I researched some of these pop culture elements and wrote several vignettes in the second person. I then placed these before and after the longer essays. I saw these as moments to both introduce and conclude an essay’s larger themes while providing a release valve for emotionally challenging moments.
Ultimately I folded such vignettes into the larger essays and did away with the second person point of view, but the title remained. The Perils of Girlhood is about the trauma and heartache but also the joy of being a girl and woman, mother and daughter--and while some of the book might address my specific experiences, many of the stories are universal.
Q: The writer Dinty W. Moore said of the book, “The Perils of Girlhood is an essential meditation on how we raise our daughters, in a voice that is clear, honest and wise.” What do you think of that description?
A: I have a few friends with daughters, and when we spend time together, we invariably discuss how our girls are managing adolescence. We discuss what a pressure cooker high school can be and how social media complicates all of this (I just learned about spam Instagram accounts).
I always leave such conversations feeling less alone, and if there is one hope for the book it is that others will read the book and, like Dinty W. Moore’s comment, consider how we are raising our daughters. By asking hard questions and listening to one another we might discover new approaches.
I don’t know that memoir would have captured me if I hadn’t been so taken by Scott Russell Saunders’ voice. To me, voice is essential to any piece of literature. It is what compels you to lean closer.
If you believe in the voice--if it isn’t just some disembodied thing--you are more apt to make connections with the work and when you do that, the book is no longer something you are just holding in your hands, but the words become inextricably connected to your own life and situation.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Returning to traumatic events exhausted me and yet by doing so, I found forgiveness for my younger self--the girl who found herself alone in a hotel room with her high school Turnabout date or struggled to parent a daughter with seizures.
I think that when I began many of these essays I might have approached them from a singular perspective: This is bad, I made a poor choice, If I could do it over again, I wish I could… and so on.
Yet the process of putting the book together as a whole helped me see these experiences as multifaceted. It’s easy to consider that perils are negative, but transformation and joy can also come from hard times. My hope is that readers consider how best to support the girls and women in their lives.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m continuing to write essays about motherhood and daughterhood and everything in between. I’m always looking for what I cannot forget--what continues to roll around in my head as I’m walking the dog or chopping carrots for a salad.
I seek moments of quiet to do this. I also journal most days as soon as I wake and during this unfettered time, I can get close to these moments and search out larger connections.
A recent essay braided together three strands--my diabetic grandma, my fondness for baking cookies, and how as my daughters fling time over their shoulders, I try to fix the moment in my mind by baking.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’m floored to be here, talking with you. I didn’t set out to write a book. I was simply captivated by what I was reading--so captivated that it made me want to explore my own life with the same sort of deep inquiry.
So often my students discover things about themselves in memoir. They are often writing about traumatic events and while writing is not therapy, it can be therapeutic.
If readers read The Perils of Girlhood or any memoir that remains with them, I hope that they will consider sitting down in their own circle of quiet to see where their words take them.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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