Q&A with Randy Susan Meyers

 

Photo by Sharona Jacobs

 

 

Randy Susan Meyers is the author of the new novel The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone. Her other novels include Waisted. She lives in Boston.

 

Q: What role do you see the theme of social justice playing in your new novel?

 

A: Every book I've written steals from my commitment to justice (should anyone commit to injustice?) but never at the expense of plot and character—is there a more propulsive novel than The Handmaid's Tale? 

 

So many in the generations of the ‘60s and ‘70s devoted themselves to bettering the world—I wanted to portray the characters behind the tropes with whom we're familiar. With a nod to Marilyn French, Marge Piercy, and others, I examined that generation from 1964 to the present.

There are two point-of-view characters, a mother and a daughter: The mother, Annabel, fights for justice while her daughter, Ivy, craves normalcy—until idealism collides with reality, bringing tragic consequences.

 

The story begins in 1964 during Freedom Summer in Mississippi when the disappearance of Annabel’s first love sparks a lifelong fight for justice—the novel follows five couples and their seven children from the 1960s to 2020 through the turbulence of civil rights, Vietnam, feminism, and communal living as profoundly personal and political struggles intertwine across generations.

 

Social justice has played a role in everything I've done since childhood—probably because books actually raised me. Early on, I developed a penchant for books rooted in social issues, my early favorites being Karen and The Family Nobody Wanted. Shortly after, I moved on to Jubilee and The Diary of Anne Frank.

 

Q: Do you think this type of commune was unique to the period you write about?

 

A: Political collectives have existed in many ways throughout history. During the ‘60s, as an answer to the ‘50s (McCarthyism, women being quashed post-WWII, civil rights fights moving to the forefront, and so much more), we saw a rise in “counter-culture” to counter the boxes into which people were squashed. Thus, we saw an increase in the number of communes and collectives.

Q: What inspired the name “Ivy Puddingstone”?

 

A: The communal house—their political collective—where the characters live is called "Puddingstone" as a nod to the puddingstone rock from which many buildings in Mission Hill, Boston, were built.

 

Ivy's (she is one of the two point-of-view characters in the book) real name is Ivy Pascal, but after she and the other six children of Puddingstone are moved to a commune in Vermont, she thinks: "At that moment, I became more Ivy Puddingstone than Ivy Pascal, Ivy with the many mothers, Ivy P belonging to all, belonging to nobody."

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write this novel?

 

A: I began The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone during the first Trump administration through Biden's time in office; it was released just before the latest election.

 

Having been embroiled in studying and writing about the post-McCarthy era, a time when youth and others rose in defiance to tackle civil rights, the Vietnam War, and women's rights—a time when people like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Fannie Lou Hamer, and John Lewis led America to a better place, gives me hope for the awful moment we are in.

 

Though there will be much pain for far too many, I believe those who will lead us out of this darkness are readying for battle.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I've been working on the following for years:

In a nation on the brink of authoritarian rule, seven women leading seemingly ordinary lives must leave their families when called into action. With supernatural abilities and lifetimes of hidden training, they must infiltrate the White House and dismantle a theocratic regime before religious tyranny consumes the country.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Randy Susan Meyers.