A Story of Unfitting: Susan Swan’s Memoir, Big Girls Don’t Cry

Our warmest wishes for the season – and a reminder that this is the last interview for the podcast (there may be one smaller episode at the year’s end, but not an interview), before we open up voting for this year’s GLWL awards: the author featured in your favourite episode will receive a cash prize and medal to honour their involvement.

In this episode, Linda reflects on how boxes are at times about imposed limitations. "Don’t box me in," you might argue – or let’s try to think outside the box (because we can’t stand the way things have been otherwise going. It’s time for a change). And it is this -- thinking and living outside the lines (and boxes) -- that Susan Swan’s wonderful new memoir, Big Girls Don’t Cry: A Memoir About Taking Up Space (HarperCollijns), compels us to do, to locate our sense of dignity and agency, to find our sense of self-worth.

Swan is the author of several novels including The Biggest Modern Woman in the World (1983), The Last of The Golden Girls (1989), What Casanova Told Me (2004), and The Wives of Bath (1993), which was made into the film Lost and Delirious (3:45). In this episode, we discuss how taking up space can be positive for women (and men too!), a means to shift beyond the conventions that have hemmed her (and us) and to find our way out of the boxes that have contained us.

Other points of discussion:

• the genre of the memoir
• Margaret Atwood and official autobiography
• Soren Kierkegaard

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