Rebecca Pitts is the author of the new young adult biography Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People. Pitts's work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Teen Vogue and The New York Times for Kids.
Q: Why did you decide to write a biography of journalist and activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006)?
A: There were a few different points in my life when I stumbled upon Jane and her ideas.
I grew up in a very suburban place in Connecticut where you needed a car to drive everywhere. So my first experience living in the city was in Boston in college and I had such a positive feeling about living in an urban environment.
I read about Jane Jacobs in an architecture history course and was really fascinated about her observations of the city.
At that time the Big Dig was underway. It was a huge construction project intended to reverse the damage of the freeway that had ripped through downtown Boston, essentially segregating the north end of Boston and other neighborhoods from the more central downtown areas.
So I could see that in the late ‘90s, early aughts that a tremendous amount of effort was being invested in the reintegration of these communities.
Fast forward, after working a bit, I decided to go back to graduate school for archival science (a specialized library degree) and I did one of my internships at the John Jacob Burns library at Boston College.
I helped “process” her photo collection— meaning I organized and described her personal and professional photos. I saw another side of Jane — she seemed really lovely and silly and adoring of her husband and children. I was moved by her antiwar activism as well.
When I shifted into freelance writing I was ready and looking for a bigger project. The idea to tell Jane’s story to young readers felt like a lightbulb moment. I would have loved to have known about her as a middle or high schooler.
Q: What would you say are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about her?
A: Sometimes the general public’s focus on celebrities can be intense and misguided. Famous people can be perceived as mythical or super-human. I think the energy around Jane was like this at times.
Jane had a lot of great ideas. Like any human writer, she didn’t always get it right. But in general she was an intuitive, brilliant thinker and at times was even prophetic.
But, you know, there's this misconception that she was a homemaker. Homemakers — people who provide the necessary labor of unpaid care of others — are an invaluable part of our society. There was this misconception that she was a homemaker who looked out her window and then wrote a best-selling book about the cities.
By the time she wrote Death and Life she was 45. She worked herself up the ranks of a male industry in journalism in New York City and in the industry of architecture and urbanism — again, very male professions, especially at that time. She was a skilled, accomplished professional. So I think that's one misconception.
Q: The writer Barry Wittenstein says, “Each generation deserves their own Jane Jacobs biography, written in the rhythms and sensibilities of today’s youth. When future urbanists now in school are asked where they first were introduced to the work and life of Jane Jacobs, I would not be surprised how many will credit Pitts’ phenomenally researched and entertaining book.” What do you think of that description, and what do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: Well, that is an incredibly kind description. And I think that the benefit that I have writing in 2024 is that I am able to read, absorb, and hopefully bring to light all of the work of other scholars and writers who have been writing about Jane Jacobs since the ‘50s.
In terms of take-always, I hope readers trust themselves to be experts of their own lived experiences. We as ordinary people should be looked to as the experts on what’s working in our communities.
The one thing about Jane Jacobs that I really hope young people will get is that ordinary people have a tremendous power to be able to shape the future of our communities.
Q: How did you research the book and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: This is my first full book-length project. It seems obvious —but you have to start with what makes you curious and interested. There’s some preliminary research and hopefully a moment when you say wow, I have to write about this. And then there's the process of pitching the idea and selling the book — that’s when the real work starts.
And so I think what you first do is you try to understand everything you can about the primary sources that are available. In this case, Jane’s archive is at Boston College. There's a fabulous book titled Ideas that Matter that is essentially her printed archive. That was enormously helpful.
It’s also important to read secondary sources written by experts who likely know a lot about your subject. It's a bit of a dance. And I think you just sort of intuitively know when you're done — you start to loop back on ideas that you've already read and absorbed and that's the point when you're ready--really ready--to dive into the work of writing.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently working on a picture book about a pioneer of journalism who set ground-breaking standards for ethics in reporting.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment