Best Of: 'Spider-Man' dir. Destin Daniel Cretton / Novelist Harriet Clark

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Did you miss this fight? The film Spider-Man, brand new day, continues to break box office records after having the biggest U.S. opening weekend in history.

Today, we meet the film's director, Destin Daniel Cretan.

Before Marvel, he worked in a group home for At-Risk teens, an experience that shaped everything he's made since then, and became the movie Short Term 12. Also, we hear from Harriet Clark. She was 11 months old when her mother was a getaway driver

of a robbery. The robbers were members of a radical off-shoot of the weather underground and the Black Panthers. For 37 years, Clark spent Saturdays visiting her mother and prison.

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No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense. Download it in your app store today. This is Fresh Year Weekend, I'm Tonya Mosley. At the end of the last Spider-Man movie, no way home. Back in 2021, Peter Parker makes a choice.

To save the people he loves, he had everyone on Earth forget he ever existed. My guest today, filmmaker, Destin Daniel Cretten, picks up the story years later in the latest Spider-Man brand new day. Peter is still Spider-Man, but years after everyone he loves

has forgotten about him, he's living almost completely alone. And when strange things began happening to his powers, there's no one in his life who knows him well enough to even know something is wrong.

[MUSIC PLAYING] What is happening to me? Did you miss this fighting? I'm losing my mind. [MUSIC PLAYING]

I am totally out of control. I got to fix whatever this is right now. That's Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Spider-Man brand new day. And it opened with the biggest debut in box office history. Director, Destin Daniel Cretten, came to Marvel

from a very different kind of filmmaking. His first job out of college was at a group home for at-risk teenagers. He turned that experience into the 2013 film, Short Term 12, which featured young actors, pre-larsin,

Romney Malik, and Lequit Sandfield. Cretten went on to direct the glass castle and just mercy about attorney Brian Stevenson's work defending men on death row. His Marvel debut was Sean Chi and the legend of the 10 rings.

The studio's first film with an Asian lead and an Asian director. He also created the Marvel series Wonder Man. Destin Daniel Cretten, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you.

OK, 23 million people went to see this movie the first weekend.

And a movie like this-- I mean, it has enormous expectations. There, of course, the studio expectations, because this is a franchise. It's a brand. And in many ways, these stories have to carry each other

from film to film.

that you have to bring to the film, as well,

your sensibilities as a director, knowing that you're stepping into an established story. Was there a moment or any time during the beginning of the process

“where you said, this is the film, and this is my stamp, my place in it?”

There were a few moments in the development process where I felt like I now understand the heart of this story. One was in the writing process. We were trying to really understand what the internal story was of Peter Parker.

And I was reflecting a lot on my 20s when I left university. And when I didn't really have a real direction in life, when a lot of my friends are going off to other things. And it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone.

That was around the time that I was working

at that group home for at routine ages. When I think about that particular time in my life, I don't know. I just felt like that was Peter. That was the stage where you're looking back

at the things and the places that you've been.

“And you don't know how to define them to move forward.”

And so to be able to look at Peter and watch him read the fine kind of the pain and the things that he's been through. And actually use them as part of the things that make him strong was a very therapeutic experience. I actually want to play a clip.

It's a scene where Peter Parker, as we said, he's been erased from the memory of everyone who loved him. And he crashes a house party thrown by MJ. The girl he loved who was played by Zindaya and Ned, his best friend, played by Jacob Battle-On.

And neither of them knows who he is.

It's the first time we kind of see them all together.

And it's a real trippy experience because of course he knows. And we know the whole backstory. But they don't know who he is. And Peter is at that moment unbelievably lonely. And he loves these two people so much.

He's been following their lives on social media. And he's at this party. And he sees MJ. And she speaks first. Let's listen.

Oh, there's like 50 people on our apartment. It's just basically speaking. I mean, he's released two of them or sociopaths, which is kind of cool. Nice flowers. Oh, there are housewarming gifts.

Really? Yeah. Oh, OK. Most people just brought beer and chips. It's very nice.

I'm MJ. I'm a main nerd. I'm a main nerd. Oh, you two don't know each other? No, I'm a neighbor.

Friendly neighbor. That cough. That's a scene from Spider-Man brand new day directed by my guest today, Destin Daniel Kretten. Of course, the friendly neighbor is a play off of the whole Spider-Man franchise.

But this is kind of what you're talking about about that those growing pains of getting to the next stage of life. Because, of course, this is the device where they don't know him, and that's a big part of the storyline. But it's also something that is very ordinary, too, where you grow out of your friends at a certain

age in life. Maybe the people that you have kind of been on the journey with, you're now kind of separating. There's a certain grief that lives in that. And it also just feels so, to me, so relatable. At that stage in life, I remember being in those parties.

I remember being surrounded by people who all seem like they have it together. And seem like they are having the time of their lives. And I remember certain times feeling very alone in the middle of it. But it was really, it was actually really fun to explore that. And I mean, Tom playing awkward.

There's just nothing better than watching Tom play an awkward scene. Yeah, why? Yeah. He's just his comedic timing with his awkwardness.

“I think it's one of the most brilliant things about him.”

It's so relatable. It's not just comedy. It's just like a feeling in situation that I just feel like I've been at. This movie also introduces Jean Gray into Peter Parker's world. And for people who don't know her, Jean is a mutant who can enter people's minds. She can hear their thoughts, live inside their memories, and she is one of the X-Men.

And, you know, so everyone is talking about this. It's like, "Okay, this is setting this up for me for the next movie here." But I've read that it was actually the other way around.

want it for yourself. You wanted her to be a part of this storyline.

“Talk to me about why she was important to introduce, to kind of reinforce all of these themes”

that you were so interested in exploring. When we were writing this movie, we wanted an antagonist. That would be a real reflection of Peter Parker and where he is in his emotional journey. And we went through a lot of potential villains. And I cannot think of a better reflection than where we landed. I was really interested in having our antagonist be somebody who is younger than Peter, who really represents

in many ways what young people are going through right now, what young people are feeling.

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Phil Maker, Destin Daniel Cretan. He directed the new movie Spider-Man, brand new day, which is in The Itters Now. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is fresh air weekend.

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where we curate NPR's coverage of President Trump, and short episodes focused on a single story. Follow Trump's terms on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to my conversation with Phil Maker Destin Daniel Cretan, director of the new movie Spider-Man, brand new day. He also directed Just Mercy and Shang-Chi in the Legend of the Ten Rings, and created the Marvel series Wonder

Man. His breakout film was short term 12 about the staff and teenagers inside of a short-term group home. Drawing from the two years he spent working in one after college. Let's talk about this time that you were working in this group home. There's a story that you tell about how cocky you felt as a young man when you got this job. You thought like these kids are going to love me. I'm going to be in some ways a savior, and you got a rude awakening.

I sure did. What happened instead? It was a job that really threw a lot of things back into my faith. It was by far the the most difficult experience that I had up until that point and also the most rewarding. I grew up on Maui. I didn't realize how sheltered I was until I was working at that group home. I just was not exposed to the type of experiences that these young people had gone through. I also wasn't ready for the people that they had become because of their experiences. These

young teenagers were in many ways much more mature than I was, but then they were also very,

they had very real pain from their past just right under the surface that they were always dealing with.

So it was very quickly a very humbling experience for me. I want to actually play a clip from the film and it was your second film. Short-term 12 is a name of the facility in the film and the kids stay there until they find somewhere else to live or until they turn 18 and age out. And in this clip, the scene is Romney Malik, he plays Nate, a new staffer on his first day. Is he a proxy for you? Yes. He definitely is. Okay. Yeah, and he is talking with

Breed Larson's character Grace, who has been working there for a while and shows him the ropes.

“Let's listen. These are the files on our kids. If you want to see what kind of scrap they've been”

there. How long do they stay here? It's probably less than a year, but we have a few that have been here a little over three. We just keep them until the county figures out where they've been either next. Tom, go brush your teeth. Remember, you're not their parent, you're not their therapist, you are here to create a safe environment, that's it. Got it. Since you're new, they're going to try and test you so they can get away with. Just say no for a while. No. Okay.

That was Romney Malik and Breed Larson in the film Short Term 12,

“directed by my guest today, Destin Daniel Cretten. When you took that job, what were your aspirations?”

Yeah, I graduated with a communication degree and I was making short films. I would do a short film once a year and I would just save my money. So I worked at a group home for two or three years. I taught high school video production. I worked at a hotel putting up their media, their projectors and things. I had a lot of odd jobs to pay the bills, but it was all really a way to just pay the bills while I made movies as a hobby. Okay, because you were very clear at that time that you wanted

to make movies. I was very clear that I wanted to keep making movies as a hobby. I wasn't really chasing it as a career. I feel very surprised and lucky to be where I am. I tried moving up to LA early on, but I found it to be a little too overwhelming. And so when I moved back to San Diego where I went to school, it was also an admission to myself that I was not going to make it in the industry. I was going to go back and just try to find a way to do what I loved and continue to

do it without getting paid for it. So I didn't see that as a failure. I saw it as a way to survive psychologically as an artist. I want to switch gears to talk about another film of yours.

First off, I just want to say thank you for just mercy. I watched that with my children during

“the pandemic and surprisingly, I think it's surprising for me that they still reference that sometimes.”

And for people who don't know it, it's based on Brian Stevenson's memoir about his work defending men on death row in Alabama. I want to actually play a clip from the film and this scene features Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillan. And Walter is a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama. And Michael B. Jordan plays Brian Stevenson and at the time he's a young lawyer just out of Harvard who has taken on this case. And the two are meeting for the first

time in the visiting area of the prison. And Walter basically tells Brian Stevenson, "I don't really

trust that you can help me and get me off death row. Let's listen." Rich boy from Harvard, you don't know what it is down here. When you get from the moment you're born, you can buddy up with these white folks and make them laugh and try to make them like you whatever that is and you say yes or no man but when it's your turn they ain't got to have no fingerprints. No evidence. And when the witness ain't got me, don't hold things up.

And none of that matter when all your think is is I look like a man. Who could kill somebody?

“But that's not what I think. You know how many people don't free from Alabama Debra?”

None. Well make you think you're going to change that. I ain't doing a f*cking thing. Thought it was to make Miller. We done here. Mr. McMillan, please. I'm here to help. That was Jamie Foxe's Walter McMillan and Michael B. Jordan who played Brian Stevenson.

What is it about filmmaking that's your language that is your way to express? Because you're touching on something with these people especially Brian Stevenson who just recently he had this he was talking about how this moment that we're in is a moment where we are taking the record. It's narrative change. It's through storytelling that we're able to make change in this generation in this moment. And I'm just wondering for you what what is it particularly about

filmmaking that is your language? I grew up on Maui and small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And I found connection to the outside world in movie theaters. As a kid I would watch many movies

cultures. That's how I understand how kids grew up in high school on the mainland. And one of my biggest takeaways was not how different we are but how similar we are. Emotionally, the things that when I watch D.T. and the things that I see this young man going through in his family and his

school were things that I went through. And I have always found movies to be a way of

peering into other lives that I would never otherwise experience to peering to other worlds and find those things that still connect us. And I feel lucky that I went from being a spectator

“to then just kind of getting obsessed with doing this as a young kid. And I think over time I have”

just become, I don't know, become very addicted to the process of exploring a subject of jumping into it and understanding it and finding a way to write it in a narrative through the eyes of a

character that I identify with. You mentioned how you go see movies with your dad and your mom was

you called her, you know, a little hippie mom. I think you referenced that she was sort of a hippie mom but she also was a mom who was very particular about the media and other things like that that you consumed. How did that work in your household? My mom was very kind of anti-TV. She would allow us to watch certain things and we could watch TGIF on Friday night or but most of the time. What's TGIF? You're talking about the home video? No, it's like that run on Friday nights and

family matters. Okay. Yeah. Like a bunch of different family themes, it comes. Yeah.

Watch like foreign or something. Yeah. But it was, it was actually looking back really wonderful. She we lived in Hiku, a small town right next to a pineapple field and lots of open spaces. We grew up in the same property that my mom grew up on and she would just force us out of the house. And because of that we had to find our own ways of of playing make believe or making up plays or making up dancer teens or fight choreography and then we'd perform it for my mom and we used to

do that when I was really young and then around 11 or 12 my grandma loaned me her VHS camera and I got that's when I got addicted to making movies. And so my mom wouldn't let us watch TV but she allowed us to make as much stuff as we wanted. So that's when I started making movies with my

“siblings and honestly the process has not changed. We would make it, we would spend all day making,”

making a short film or a commercial or whatever and then I put it together and then we'd have a little premiere but the premiere was just like my mom or my mom and dad. But that feeling remains the same. I'm still like kind of buzzing and have those butterflies in my stomach before I'd show it and then my mom collapsed and it was like that's the full process and that's still the same creative process that I go through. And your mom cheated in allow comics in the house?

Nope. The lore is you had one little beat up spider-man comic. Yeah that was more from my grandpa had some comics and of course my friends right around the time I was ten was like that was like the Todd McFarlane days and I remember I remember those Spider-Man comics and sneaking I have a memory of sneaking one that was potentially at my grandpa's house or it was from one of my friends but it was like those spawn and Spider-Man

were kind of the big thing when I was like 10 or 11 years old. Do you know why your mom didn't

“want you to read those or you and your siblings? I think there's I mean I think she was”

anytime she would see something that was violent she wasn't into it so fighting wasn't cool sexiness. She wasn't into that when I was a kid so and it goes hand in hand with her being

but you know as you when you're a kid you find ways to sneak.

“Your Marvel debut happened in 2021 directing Shaanxi the first Asian superhero and”

this was you said this was the first time in your professional career that you walked into

a space and everyone was Asian just about describe what that was like for you and what that meant for you at that particular moment in your career. Yeah I was one of those things I didn't really know I was missing until it happened and when I when I stepped on to set once you know once all of our our stunt performers were there and all of our actors were on set and it was kind of that first day on set it it was around as cool and it was just like this there was something about set that

just felt homey that felt so comfortable to be able to have conversations with people that fully understand what my grandma is like and what what growing up in an Asian culture is like

so I didn't know that that aspect of myself could be a part of my filmmaking you know I always

sort of compartmentalized my upbringing and my culture and growing up in Hawaii as sort of a separate thing than my experience as a filmmaker until I was on set for Shang-Chi I was very special. You know in addition to this theme of family and your films there's also something about young people who feel alone and have had to deal with the loss of loved ones and that theme is in short term 12 and Spider-Man Peter and the young villain in the movie also in Shang-Chi he

went through the same loss and violence that also seems like that's a pretty pretty strong

“through line. Yes I agree. Is there a reason that you you keep coming back to making films about that?”

Quite a lot of pain and hardship. The experience that I had having a very complicated relationship with my what's my dad who passed away a few years ago was an experience that many times left me feeling very isolated and alone but really the the thing that carried me through was my

relationship with my siblings and they have always been there when I was my darkest moments in life

and so I don't know somehow that's probably just ingrained in me somewhere and it just and it comes out subconsciously when I'm writing or it is a story that I personally don't feel I will ever get old examining in different ways. But yeah.

“Can you share more about what you mean about the complicated relationship with your dad?”

I think in many ways most of my movies have something to do with my dad. My dad was a very passionate man. I don't like to diagnose people but I think we all suspect that he was undagnosed by polar on some level. He was very passionate, very wonderful to be around very loving and moments and could also be very dark and very angry and it just depends which dad you are going to get on the day. I grew up along with my siblings learning to navigate

those emotions, those real intense peaks and valleys and when my dad would come home I learned to become very sensitive to what state he was in. I have found over the course of my career that I have so much to thank for my experience with my dad. I am aid so grateful that he really was the person who instilled in me my love of movies. I mean,

Clint Eastwood. He loved Schwarzenegger. He loved Stallone. I would hear the sounds of guns and

“explosions going off downstairs late at night and he would be watching the latest Schwarzenegger movie”

or whatever and I would sneak downstairs and pretend I was going to the bathroom and then I'd go and hide behind the couch and watch him as he's watching the running man or total recaller. I have some of my fondest memories with him going and we watched the fugitive together in a theater and that was my first like PG-13 movie and it was so exhilarating when we when we came out of the theater I mean this was so my dad we came out of the theater my dad just raised both fists in the air

and screamed the fugitive but that's a type of passion he had you know and and so I have those memories but then I also have a dad who was often depressed I didn't understand it was depression at

“the time but who would often come home and just want to sleep or not talk or and then there was”

there was also the the angry side who could be very intense and very scary so aside from my love of movies my experience with my dad did other things for me it really allowed me to not be

afraid of any person no matter how intense they are no matter how quote unquote powerful they

believe themselves to be I feel like nobody compares to the experience that I had with my dad but it also allowed me to subconsciously create the skill of feeling other people's emotions which I find I use all the time as a director the moment an actor steps on set I feel like I just know what state they're in and I know what they need I've learned how to bring down a very intense situation

“I do feel like he was a very wonderful and troubled man but I am so grateful to have had him”

as my dad destined thank you so much for this conversation it's been great to meet you and in great to talk about all of this thank you for having me such a lovely conversation destined Daniel Cretan his new movie Spider-Man brand new day is in theaters now coming up we hear from writer Harriet Clark her mom was a getaway driver in a robbery and a member of the radical group the weather underground her new novel is based on her experience visiting

her mother in prison for about 37 years this is fresh air weekend from the light bulb to the internet human history has been driven by innovation and shortwave is exploring how the technology of tomorrow will transform our future would you write in a flying taxi will AI models fight wars here about the technological frontier every Monday on tech camp the new series from shortwave listen on the empire app or wherever you get your podcasts for years black capitalism has been sold as black

excellence one of its biggest proponents is jazzy he's asking us to say you can't knock the husk and I'm sorry like I just I feel like I can listen to NPR's code switch podcast and the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts this is fresh air weekend I'm tanya mostly Terry has our next interview here she is one of the last actions of the extremist left wing groups with roots in the 1960s was the brink's robbery of 1981 two militant groups one an offshoot of the weather underground

the other an offshoot of the black panthers robbed a brink's arm a truck carrying over a million and a

half dollars it ended in a shootout in which one security guard and two police officers were killed due to the clerk was a getaway driver who was sentenced to 75 years till life it meant leaving behind her 11-month-old daughter that daughter Harriet Clark is my guest she's just published a novel that draws from her own experiences being raised by her grandparents and visiting her mother in prison every weekend for most of the 37 years her mother was incarcerated it required traveling

about an hour from New York City to bedford hills correctional facility a maximum security prison for

women Harriet knew her mother would never get out but she did get out after being granted clemency

the prison in the novel being on top of a hill it's her first novel Harriet Clark welcome to

fresh air and congratulations on the book you're an incredible writer and I'm glad that you wrote this it is an absolute trip and to be speaking with you and I'm so grateful to be on the show thank you

“I'm honored to say that I want to start with a reading that I think will help set up your story”

and your mother's story and this is from pretty early in the book when Susanna the child the main character is leaving the dentist's office with her grandfather and her grandfather has just had one of his teeth capped so this is as they're leaving my mother had robbed of bank the first woman

said no the second woman said my mother had expropriated funds for the purpose of revolutionary struggle

the woman's tongue suggested that she was possibly defending my mother and possibly mocking her when my grandfather emerged days and swollen it did not seem right to press for explanation but he must have heard what the woman said or the anesthesia must have caused his mind to wonder because on the drive home he spoke to me for the first time about my mother's crime a misguided attempt he called it to steal from the rich and give to the poor

then an elaborate explanation of the insurance mechanisms of banks and further clarification that many people had money in banks not just the rich when this lecture got into the weeds he shifted gears into another regarding imperialism racism militarism also materialism all the things he said that he and my mother opposed and that he assured me I opposed as well his face was very close to the steering wheel your mother took it too far how old were you when you first learned

why your mother was in prison how is it explained to you I don't have a memory of coming into awareness of my mother's crime it must have been explained to me but I don't recall who explained it my mother made clear from when I was very young that she was imprisoned because she had been

“part of something that cost three men their lives so I think I knew from before I even knew what I knew”

that people had died and that my mother was imprisoned because of that and she in that sense always

raised me to understand that in some ways she was guilty and that was why she was imprisoned and that she would always be there but I'm not actually sure who explained to me the details of the crime when you found out that she was part of a revolutionary group and that the robber was supposed to support the revolutionary cause what did you make of that did you know enough about politics when you learned that did you know enough about radical movements and where this robbery

fit in yes and no I unlike Susanna I continued to have a relationship to the women in my mother's collective I had a half sister and so I returned to that collective every three weeks for the weekend and they were still very actively political and so I did grow up inside a far more political atmosphere than Susanna does she's really in the aftermath of politics and I grew up inside

“active organizing so I think I did understand something about the particular movements and”

commitments they had but again you know for 40 years every conversation I ever had with my mother occurred in a crowded room that was surveyed by officers or on a phone line that was recorded and so we didn't have the privacy to talk about some of the things that might have been hardest to talk about and for most of my life you know my mother had to make prison a place I wanted to come to you know our visits had to be enjoyable and so in that sense too it was very rare that we were sitting

there getting into the nitty gritty of her crime especially when I was young you know fundamentally she was trying to play with me and have fun with me and let me feel close to her. The prison was like your home where your second home because you were there every Saturday Susanna and then your novel vows to keep returning there for the rest of her mother's life since the assumption why she was going to be there for the rest of her life and that gives Susanna

did you feel that way too? I mean yes and no I think that there is a way that the prison was a

“holding container for me and is meant to be a holding container for Susanna. I think in the prison”

she's existing inside patterns that really do give a certain kind of steadiness to her life whereas actually I think one of the things that makes prison a real life quite difficult is that

there always changing things on you you know they don't want you to be stabilized and steady

the point is a certain kind of perpetual instability so that they can and that control over you so I could wear the exact same outfit one week to the next and they could say nope those sleeves are too short you can't come in um so actually my experience wasn't quite as steady as Susanna's is though I do think that I had an experience of peacefulness by virtue of the fact that I knew nothing was ever going to change you know my mother had been in there as far back as I could remember and she was

going to be in there forever and so that felt like a kind of steady piece for me and made me feel different than the great difficulties the kids around me were in. Was it a good feeling to know she

would be there forever I mean it was prison and the other hand she was always there she was always

“waiting for you you always knew where to find her. Yes I think that I did experience myself”

as having a piece that the children around me did not have because you know most children lose their mothers to prison within their active awareness you know they had a mother at home most women in prison where the primary care givers for their children most women in prison are mothers and so they lost their mothers and that is obviously an incredible trauma that I felt fundamentally spared and most kids even though their mothers often had long sentences their mothers were actively

trying to come home and I never envied that it seemed like another form of torture to me the way

these kids were always hoping you know they would at the end of visiting hours they would say will you be there this weekend for my recital and some of the women would say I'll try you know or will you be able to be there for my graduation there was always this possibility on the horizon that to me seems so torturous um and so I felt grateful to be spared a certain kind of hope and waiting as part of my research for this interview I read an article in The New York Times

from early in your mother's incarceration and it was a profile of her and it describes her as reluctant to have participated in the Brink's robbery because you were a baby but she felt she needed to prove her commitment to the revolutionary cause she was on the getaway car she didn't see the shooting the money was thrown into the car and the Brink's truck was carrying like 1.6 million dollars I don't know how much was actually stolen and she portrays herself as a very kind of

insecure driver and a really bad getaway driver and doesn't really know where she's going and I think maybe gets in a little accident at the end yes so did you read that I don't know how much she told you I don't know how much she wanted to talk about participating in the robbery and being the getaway driver so like the more you learned the how did it affect your opinion of your mother I mean one thing I'll say is that my mother was oh getaway car driver she wasn't the getaway

car driver for the primary van that was used but um I worry that I do share certain qualities with Susanna in terms of a kind of willful unknowingness I mean I have made myself understand better the details of my mother's crime but one of the things I had wanted to dramatize in the book you know

“there's a chapter where the grandmother who believes you should look things in the face you know”

she's always saying to Susanna do you go out of your way to know nothing and Susanna keeps saying yes you know and that's a lot what the book is about you know what feels so threatening about knowing things about our loved ones like knowing their mistakes or their sufferings or their histories you know in the novel the grandmother really doesn't want the burden because it feels like the burden of raising Susanna after Susanna's mother's own prism is that the vibe you got from

your grandma mother that she wanted to be free but she was tied down taking care of you you know the older I get the solder it is to me how little I knew my grandmother not only because

tragedies of her life which were her daughter's life imprisonment and then her husband her great

“loves death and so I think I knew my grandmother an incredibly grief-stricken years and so my”

grandmother did have a certain atmosphere around her of clearly being somewhat embattled with the life she had but it's hard for me to source exactly where those feelings came from and I will say the grandmother in the book is not my grandmother but also the fundamental thing I had wanted to dramatize in that book was you know my grandmother did not want the life we had and to some extent I did I loved my grandmother and she felt like my whole life and so you know there's a moment in the

chapter where the grandmother is fantasizing about how their life should be if the mother hadn't committed the crime and Susanna says I want to live with you and the grandmother says then you're

“wishing a man dead and I think that was a real conundrum to me in my life that sense of how can I”

value my life if it's based off of a tragedy and suffering by so many other people and so that was one thing that I felt I was trying to look at in the chapter and and also the fact that my grandmother

and I did have this difference because she always knew we were inside a tragedy she always felt

this should not be as it is and I fundamentally did accept the life I had and still found much of it meaningful and delightful even I recently interviewed Zade Ares who's the son of Bill Ares and Bernardine Dorne who were two leaders of the militant left wing group the weather underground and so Zade wrote a memoir about growing up underground because his parents early in his life had like fake identities they were basically in hiding underground so one of the themes in his book

is if his parents knew that they were going to continue as revolutionaries who we're going to be doing revolutionary acts that could easily get them in prison why did they decide to have a child knowing that they could be locked away for years and morning how much you thought about that too you know it's interesting because from the outside people have often been struck by my mother's abandonment of me and I know that that is touched on this idea of the mother

abandoning her child is touched on often in the book but my actual lived experience was of my mother's profound devotion to me because you know most people have to share their mothers with the world you know their moms have partners and jobs and other kids and friends and every time I saw my mother all she was doing was giving me attention I was her whole world and so I didn't have the feeling of of being abandoned by my mother in my kind of conscious reality I'm sure something in me

“did feel fundamentally abandoned in life I think I've always felt somewhat precarious but”

I didn't feel abandoned by my mother and I because her love for me was so present it was never

confusing to me why she'd had a child I could see how much you wanted a child I could see how much she loved me and I was also you know if you're raised in a women's maximum security facility you're raised around women who are perpetually being de-mothered who's mothering is being disrespected and I've never wanted to imply that my mother was less of a mother to me because she had other commitments my experience is not that she's less of a mother I think

she's an incredible mother I think she figured out how to mother me in some of the most

difficult conditions possible and so I think because I've never felt like I had a second class

mothering experience it doesn't feel to me like why did she even bother having a child if it was going to be under these conditions I knew she loved me and wanted me and I knew it was the great tragedy of her life not to be able to be around me all the time your mother sentence was commuted and she was released on parole on 2019 when your mother got out of prison did she live with you at first no she's never lived with me and actually you know I think that many people my

mother included I think did expect that we would be making up for a lost time you know but actually

adult I could never call my mother you know I have no memory of ever wanting to of having something

upsetting happened and wishing I could call her having something exciting happened I just never I knew I couldn't call her and I didn't want to call her and now of course she's like any mother

“and she's like why don't you have a call me you know so I think that maybe she and others thought you know”

now we would be together all the time but actually it's like I'm kind of this awkward teenager

having to learn for the first time how do you know get my mom to live the house so I can

drink with my friends Harriet Clark thank you so much for talking with us thank you so much for having me it really it's a great honor Harriet Clark's new novel is called The Hill she spoke with Terry Gross fresh air weekend is produced by Theresa Madden fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigger our technical director at engineer is Audrey Bentham our engineer this week is Adam Stanna

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