391. RWA One Month Later, Part IV: A Conversation with Courtney Milan

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Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 391 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and this is part four and the final episode in my series on “RWA: One Month Later.” We’ve heard from C Chilove and Laurel Cremant and Diana Neal, the officers of CIMRWA; from past RWA president HelenKay Dimon; and from Jessie Edwards, Marketing and PR Manager for RWA. Today I’m speaking with Courtney Milan.

There is a lot to process, and this is a somewhat emotional interview wherein we talk about what happened, her reactions, and what’s next for her. I also want to mention that we talk intermittently, though nonspecifically, about the physical manifestations of trauma, so please be aware going into this episode if that’s something that’s difficult for you to listen to.

I invite you to check your podcast feed for all four episodes in this series. They should all be there right in a row from January 31st through today.

And as a housekeeping note, I will be taking Friday, February 7th, off, and I will be back on February 14, Valentine’s Day, with Amanda, and I hope that you will tune in then.

As always, many thanks to garlicknitter for the transcript and to our Patreon community, whose support makes transcripts possible.

And now, the final episode in “RWA: One Month Later.”

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Sarah: Hi there, Courtney. How you doing?

Courtney Milan: I’m doing – [pauses] – dot-dot-dot.

[Laughter]

Courtney: I was going to say I’m doing fine, but one of the things I realized recently is that, like, I have this reflexive tendency to say, I’m fine! Like, no matter what is happening, like, the entire world is falling down around me, and, like, it’s fine –

Sarah: This is fine!

Courtney: – for strangers, you know, because they don’t actually want to know about my life or what’s going on, but, like, I say it to my husband, and then he’s like, wait a second. You’re not actually fine, are you? And I’m like, oh shit, I’m not.

Sarah: It sucks when they can call you out on that, doesn’t it?

Courtney: Yeah, yeah. The thing is, he usually doesn’t call me out on it soon enough?

[Laughter]

Courtney: So, like, so, like, it would be great if I said, I’m fine, and he said, no, you’re not? But usually what happens is I say I’m fine and he, like takes me at my word, and then, like, you know, four hours later it’s like meltdown. So –

Sarah: Yeah. And then –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – he’s like, oh right, and when I asked if you were okay and you said you were fine, that was a not-fine fine.

Courtney: Yeah, exactly. I’m working on it. So I’m doing dot-dot-dot.

Sarah: Dot-dot-dot?

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: “How are you” is a very, very difficult question, and I imagine that the answer is many, many hours long at this point.

Courtney: Yeaahh! I guess so. I, I’m not, so, I have, like, I tend to have, like, really weird delayed emotional reactions to things? Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – for the first like three or – how far in, we’re more than four weeks into this, aren’t we?

Sarah: It was one month ago on Thursday.

Courtney: Yeah. So we’re now, like, bumping up against week five, and emotional reactions have finally started to settle in, and they’re, like, wildly all over the place.

Sarah: That makes sense! What are some of your reactions, if you don’t mind sharing?

Courtney: Well, you know, so there’s, I think one of the strongest ones is sadness.

Sarah: Yeah!

Courtney: I feel like so many people put in so much work, trying to move the dial like two centimeters, and it lasted for about like six months. Like, my God! You know, it’s just, I mean, like, and I, I don’t know how much is apparent from people who only were watching it, but, like, the amount of work that was put in, like the RITA ceremony last year, the amount of labor that was put in by so many people to get a ceremony that was inclusive and celebrated the history of the genre in a way that it’s never been celebrated before! Like, so much work by so many people! I keep feeling like I keep saying that, but, like, now we’re talking about people who have probably given up. You know, if we went through and calculated the amount of time we’ve lost, you know, we’re probably –

Sarah: Oh boy.

Courtney: – talking about people who have donated millions and millions of dollars of labor overall. Whew!

Sarah: How many years were you on the Board?

Courtney: Four.

Sarah: I asked this of HelenKay, who was on the Board for, she says, six –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – I think it was six years. I do not remember –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – numbers well – and I asked her how many books did serving on the Board cost you?

Courtney: Yeah, a lot. Like a lot.

Sarah: Is that true for you as well?

Courtney: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, if – so, like, I mean, you can look at, you can actually just look at my output from when I started on the Board in, what was it, 2014, November of 2014? Like, 2015 –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – 2016, 2017, 2018 are, like, my lowest output years, and then 2019 was, like, a recovery year for me? Ha-ha-ha!

Sarah: Well, it was at the start, and then it ended kind of poorly. [Laughs]

Courtney: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, honestly, 2019, like, like, the emotional impacts for me of serving on the Board were pretty intense and are things that I had just begun to explore, like, at the end of 2019 and realizing sort of like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – some of the things that had happened with me in the interim – yeah, so I think I was just, I was just beginning to sort of like get back on track – and I don’t think that’s actually been derailed –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – but you know, it probably was about like 1.5 full-length books per year for me, and I’m not a fast writer. And I think that’s pretty, I think it’s pretty clear if you just go and look at what I published during those years I was on the Board.

Sarah: And this is your job. This is your, your, your –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: This is, this is your livelihood –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – and so volunteering for the Board cost you a portion of your livelihood, and I imagine that’s true for a lot of Board members, especially in years where so much –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – is happening and they were trying to do so much.

Courtney: Yeah. I mean, my guess is it probably cost me, like, easily half a million bucks.

Sarah: Holy shit.

Courtney: You know, and it’s fine.

Oh shit! I just did it!

Sarah: No, it’s not fine. [Laughs]

Courtney: See what I did? See, like – you know, whatever.

Sarah: I –

Courtney: It’s, it’s –

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: But you know, let me, let me, let me rephrase that: it was a choice I made, right? And the second –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – term that I served on the Board, I was even more aware of the choice that I was making, but I felt like we were doing good things and like it would make a difference to the genre, and so that was a choice I was willing to make.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: It is what it is.

Sarah: It’s not fine, but you have accepted that that was –

Courtney: Like, we, I mean, look –

Sarah: – the result.

Courtney: – the fact that we have a serious structural racism problem in the industry is not fine. The fact that many, many people decided they were going to throw in what they could in order to try and solve that problem is not – it’s not fine that we had to solve the problem, but I felt like it needed to be done.

Sarah: And you were in a position where you knew exactly what you needed to do –

Courtney: Well –

Sarah: – to help out.

Courtney: – not really.

Sarah: No?

Courtney: [Laughs] Come on, white supremacy sucks, right?

Sarah: Yes, it does!

Courtney: And if we could solve it easily, if we knew how to solve it, it would be solved! So we didn’t, we don’t know exact-, I mean, like, so I think if you go back and look at the original diversity report – I don’t know if it’s still accessible on RWA’s website, because they redid the website and everything got screwed up – but if you look, go back and look at the, the version that we put out for the membership, we list a bunch of problems, and the last problem we list is like, we’ve got this problem in that we’ve got, like, a bunch of racist members, and what, what do we do about that? And it’s like, it’s like, there were some things that we had on there that it was like, we have very clear solutions, right? Like, you know, in 2005, we, there was the whole, like, you know, one-man-one-woman issue, right? And it was like, okay, here’s a solution.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Courtney: We can issue an apology, and we can, like, take these steps to, like, try and make, you know, make things better. Like, there was official Board action, so there should be an official Board response, right? But stuff like, we’ve got racist members; what do we do about it? Like, like, I think, I think that the thing we had in that original diversity report could probably be summed up as question mark, question mark, question mark. And that is, I think, the fundamental problem: that the reason why we had all of the other problems was because there were people who explicitly wanted the, the system we had, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – never had a solution to it. Never did. Nope. No idea what to do about it. Still don’t.

Sarah: And yet, you guys made so much progress.

Courtney: Heh. Yeah.

Sarah: It is devastating to me as a, as a member who, who watched it happen and was very much in favor of all the things that you were doing to make it a more inclusive environment, one thing that I’ve realized in many, many spheres, including the federal government, how fragile progress is.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Fragile, progress is so fragile; it’s built of, like, balsa wood, like those stupid bridges you had to make to demonstrate physics and how, like, you know, one fishing weight can destroy the bridge if you don’t build it correctly? It’s all balsa wood, and the way we’ve always done things is, like, fireproof, iron-proof, waterproof?

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s very disheartening.

Courtney: Well, you know, it is in some ways, but you know, I look at kind of what happened here, and I don’t fully know what happened here, because obviously –

Sarah: I don’t think anyone’s going to know what happened here.

Courtney: No.

Zeb: Woof.

Sarah: I’m still trying to fig- – Zeb, my dog, does not know what happened here, by the way.

Courtney: Yeah. I asked Pele, and he looked at me and he was like, weird.

Sarah: Humans, man. We, they do not make sense.

Courtney: Yeah. Pele just looked at me right now, as I’m talking about him, and he’s like, yeah, uh, whatever.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: So, no, but I think there’s one thing that I have learned that I would do differently. I would have fired Allison and Carol way back when we had the chance. You know.

Sarah: Really!

Courtney: Yeah! You know, because the thing is, we clashed a lot, right? And it was always presented to me as, oh, well, you know, you’re too radical. It’s, it’s like, fuck, all I want is, like, fucking processes that don’t, that aren’t racist and, like, not, not to have – whatever. You know, so we, we clashed a lot, and we had, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – a whole lot of issues. Like, I knew there was, like, I, I, we actually don’t have the ability as the Board to fire Carol; we can only fire the Executive Director.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: But we knew there were issues, and I don’t think we realized how deep-seated they were, because it was always presented to us as, oh, well, you know, I’m just trying to do this and cross this I and dot this – cross this I, dot this T; I mean, that actually sounds accurate, based on what was happening – but, like, you know, we have to be very careful and, you know, let’s do this; and here’s what the lawyer says about this; and oh, the lawyer says you can’t do that; and like, like, all this stuff. We were so freaking careful on every single step, and there were so many things that we didn’t quite get because it was like, oh, well, we have to be careful. And then this comes up, and they’re not fucking careful on anything! And it becomes quite clear to me at this point that what we’re dealing with is white supremacy, and not just white supremacy but white supremacy where they’re totally willing to bend whatever rules when it gets the right results.

Sarah: So the difference between when you were on the Board and the number of times you encountered opposition for policies and changes and rewrites of the rules and the processes of how RWA does its business –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – conflicts greatly with the –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – seeming ease through which this ethics complaint –

Courtney: Correct.

Sarah: – went through. Yeah.

Courtney: And every single aspect of it – I mean, there’s some things that I can’t talk about because they happened in executive session, but I can say for a fact that Allison Kelley gave us counsel about what we were allowed to do in terms of rewriting ethics rules with a pending ethics complaint that is completely contrary to what happened here.

Sarah: Yikes!

Courtney: You know, and the number of times that this happened – like, I, there are so many things in here, I look at it and I’m like, what the hell is this bullshit?

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s pretty much an hour and a half of my conversation with HelenKay –

Courtney: Yeah, it’s –

Sarah: – on Friday. What happened? [Deep breath] Well – yeah.

Courtney: You know, and, and –

Sarah: It’s a hot fucking mess.

Courtney: – and the thing that, that is most frustrating to me is that they, they had to have known I would know it was bullshit. Like, they were there! They knew, they know I understand the procedures. Like, Allison has had conversations with me about how to handle complaints in X situation – and I can’t talk about details about that – where X is exactly the same sort of complaint that was made here, where Allison was like, I don’t think this goes to the Ethics Committee. She knows she had this conversation with me! What is wrong with her?!

At the time, I thought that she was sending the complaint t the Ethics Committee because Tisdale was threatening to sue RWA, maybe. She has this line in her complaint that’s like, you know, I will take legal action. She doesn’t really specify who, but you know, whatever. And I thought that, you know, she’s thinking to herself, well, Courtney’s a big girl; she can handle it, right? And that pissed me off as it was, because, you know, I understand where she’s coming from, if that was where she was coming from. Like, good of the organization at all that, but, like, I don’t have to be a big girl all the time.

So this is, this is, now you can see I’m shading into anger here. Like –

Sarah: Little bit.

Courtney: – I don’t have to be a big girl all the time! I should, I should deserve to be protected the same way any other member should!

Sarah: Yes. You should not have to always be a target.

Courtney: Exactly! And the thing is, like, when I was on the Board, I was a target constantly!

Sarah: That was actually one of the things I wanted to ask you about: the toll of having so constantly been a target for people’s outrage where things that you didn’t even say were attributed to you.

Courtney: Yes! Constantly! And we would have these weeks-long conversation on the Board about, like, is Courtney too mean? The thing that I notice now that I kind of knew was happening but it didn’t really strike me is that the people who brought those, it would be like, oh, we heard, we heard from a member – it was always Allison and Carol – oh, Carol heard from a member who’s extremely upset about Courtney doing this. And, like, they never fucking brought to us any people who were upset about racism, and I know they had conversations with people who were upset about racism.

Sarah: And anti-Semitism and lack of, lack of access and –

Courtney: Yes!

Sarah: – exclusion of culture and exclusion of religion and, yeah! Oh yeah.

Courtney: Yes, so many –

Sarah: I’ve heard a lot of those.

Courtney: – so many things! And it’s like, it’s like one of those things where it’s like you hear it and you’re like, ah, that’s a little weird! You know?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And it, it all, you know, and I, I guess I should have realized earlier what was going on, but I’m, I don’t know. Like, I knew there were issues, but there’s a point where you, you’re hoping that it’s actually just sort of subconscious. That people –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – you know, like, that they’re not doing it consciously, and I, at this point, it’s very difficult for me, you know – maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, because then they’re going to be like, oh, well, you’re defaming me – but, like, it’s very difficult for me to understand how this could have been anything other than the result of a conscious choice on their part. So much of what’s come out since this – I think the biggest thing that, that, that gets me is so much of what has come out of people bringing things to Allison and Carol and having it get quashed. And I don’t think I realized the extent of it, because I knew, like, one or two people who were my friends, and I said, oh, you should tell Allison and Carol, and then nothing happened. I thought, oh, maybe they decided they didn’t.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And then afterwards, after all of this happened, I go and I check with them. They’re like, oh yeah, I told her! And it’s like, okay, wait a second. So all of this stuff about Courtney being mean gets brought to the Board, but none of the stuff about, you know, complaints about members being racist or about feeling uncomfortable about this. Like, none of that stuff got, gets, gets brought up to the Board, and the impression the Board is given is that everyone fucking hates Courtney all the time. And that nobody really cares about what we do about racism. I mean, that’s, that’s kind of how I felt, and I, I real-, I realize that I’m exaggerating; it wasn’t quite that stark, but it’s very close.

Sarah: I cannot imagine – well, no. Let me walk that back a few centimeters. I do know a small portion of what it’s like to be yelled at for doing the things that you always do and doing what you think is, is, is the right thing to do. And I do know a small portion of what it’s like to have everyone talk about how terrible you are and not be really able to respond in any way. I don’t know what it’s like to go through what you’ve gone through, and I want to say on, on, on the recording that I am so sorry that you had to endure this bullshit, because it was, it was inhumane.

Courtney: You know, that’s a very interesting thing to say. So, like, it’s very difficult for me to sort of grapple with what actually happened to me here, if that makes any sense?

Sarah: Oh!

Courtney: It’s much easier for me –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Courtney: It’s much easier for me to grapple sort of like the entire RWA structure as being terrible to a large group of people, but I think that at this point I’m still sort of like backing away emotionally from, like, this was a shitty thing to do to me specifically?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: You know, like, it’s much easier for me to see it as a structural piece objectively.

Sarah: Well that’s objective! You can look at structure. You can describe it.

Courtney: And also then it’s not just, it’s not like, it’s not like, oh yeah! Here’s more proof that people hate you! Woohoo!

Sarah: Yes, it doesn’t feed into the more terrible parts of brain that, you know, like to talk when you don’t want them to.

Courtney: Yeah! You know, I mean, so one of the effects that, like, this, this four-year-long process of being on the Board had on me was getting to the point where I just felt like I, like every word that I said was being scrutinized? And sort of like, people were combing through it for, like, proof that I was terrible, and it, the impact that this had on my writing was, I, I can’t really describe it, but it’s very difficult to actually write books if, like, literally every word that you write you’re like, fuck, this is, somebody’s going to say this. Somebody’s going to say that. Somebody’s going to say this, right? Like –

Sarah: Yes.

Courtney: – just, like, the intense, like, anxiety about everything that I did was, like, very pervasive. And, like, it started getting better sort of like, you know, over the fall. And weirdly enough, getting the ethics complaint in September helped precipitate my understanding exactly of how this had sort of like screwed with my mental processes? So that –

Sarah: Really!

Courtney: Yeah, because, you know, like, getting the ethics process made it, made – you know, I thought for, I, I – here’s the thing: you know, like, I have made this mistake multiple times in my life, and I’ll probably continue to make it, but I’ve al-, you know, there’s, there’s sort of this view that’s like, okay, trauma is happening to you, and as soon as trauma ends it’s going to be fine, and you’re going to be great. Right?

Sarah: Oh, I wish that were true!

Courtney: And you know, during the Kozinski clerkship I had this feeling that’s like, okay, as long as I can get through this, everything’s going to be great. As soon as the clerkship is done I’m leaving, I’m out of here, and I’m leaving it behind me. And lo and behold, it, I did not leave it behind me. Right?

Sarah: Nope!

Courtney: Nope.

Sarah: Tends to come with you.

Courtney: And I will probably carry on aspects of it for the rest of my life, right? And so when I was on the Board I was like, okay, when I’m finally off the Board, then everything’s going to go away and I’ll, I’ll stop worrying about what people are saying about me. And lo and behold, I did not. Right? And so that is an aspect of, like, this weird sort of like nitpicky, like, Courtney is the diversity scapegoat thing that I’ve had to sort of like process. And the complaint did in fact help me process that, because it made me realize, oh, it’s not just being on the Board, right? It’s this weird sort of like public aspect of, like, Courtney’s words belong to everyone. And –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – we can nitpick everything that she does. And so I sort of had to get to this spot where I, you know, I, I don’t want to go into, like, too much detail about sort of like how I started working through that, but I kind of had to get to this spot where I had to think about who I was writing for and why I was giving so much room to other people in my head and how I could get them out.

Sarah: I have gone through that exact process, and it is so hard to reconnect yourself with the community that welcomes what you have to say when the community that doesn’t welcome what you have to say is sooo fucking loud.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: It is very hard. I do want to ask if you – I, I have a, I have a book recommendation for you that might help.

Courtney: Okay?

Sarah: It’s called The Body Keeps the Score?

Courtney: Okay.

Sarah: It is about the physical manifestations of trauma and that you don’t ever really put it down. But you can process it, and it shows up in your physical body and in your mental body in a lot of different ways, but it is fundamentally an absolutely mindblowing book.

Courtney: I think that is extremely true. I have not read the book. I am literally going on Amazon right now –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: – and, like, clicking, clicking, like, Buy on the Kindle edition, because, you know, this was one of my, sort of like 2018, 2019 discoveries, that there are ways that physically the Kozinski clerkship had affected me that I had not undone, and I don’t think I can undo, but that I hadn’t grappled with and didn’t realize were, like, in play? So –

Sarah: Yeah. And you have to sort of, you have to sort of make room for the ways that your body handles its past trauma, and for me, I’ve had to sort of say, oh, okay. Well, the reason you react this way is because of this thing, and you’re probably already, always going to react that way, so how can we make this reaction –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – more bearable –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – next time? Yeah.

One of the things that I really admired about the way you handled all of this – and I’m sorry, that was dangerously close to a compliment; I apologize – is – [laughs] – ‘cause I know you do not like those – is that you kept reiterating that you have feet of clay, that you don’t want to be this icon, that you don’t want to be the negative – or the positive! – diversity target spokesperson, because you’re really pushing back against this idea that is so pervasive that the people who are in the public eye trying to get something to done have to be perfect in every way, especially if they’re women, especially if they’re marginalized, especially if they –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – come from a cultural minority. It, it –

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: – all of these things stack up too: you have to be perfect; you make, must make every move perfect; and you’ve been very, very outspoken –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – about saying, no, do not apply that to me. I fuck up too. I have feet of clay.

Courtney: I do! I completely fuck up all the time. I mean, from my perspective, part of it is just like the hating compliments thing? Like, ugh. For me, I, I guess this goes back into what I was just saying, that I feel like everything gets scrutinized? I don’t want to be held to this bar of perfection. Right? We all suck in some ways, and the only thing that we can do is try to suck less –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – from day to day? Like, if somebody comes to me and they’re like, Courtney, you actually suck, I probably do suck! And I think one of the things that, you know, that I have to deal with, in terms of sucking, is dealing with a very large number of people telling me that I suck and having this fundamental thought that I do suck, and so I should listen to them, and recognizing that, in fact, it is not conceivable for me to listen to, like, twenty thousand people telling me I suck all at once.

Sarah: Nope!

Courtney: So it’s this weird thing where it’s like, you know, I have to give myself permission to not, to, to un-suck myself at a rate that makes sense and allows me to process it.

Sarah: And also to give you the right to de-, decide, well, I, I get to decide where I suck. I get to decide what I am working on, what actually are my –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – flaws that I consider mine that I want to fix, because the things that someone else doesn’t, doesn’t like about me? I mean, okay, so I’m cilantro. You think I taste like soap. That’s fine! I am still cilantro, and –

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: – I’m putting lots of it in my salsa, ‘cause it’s delicious.

Courtney: Right. It is delicious!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: No, but I think, I think I am actually a very strong flavor. Like, I totally get people not liking me, like one hundred percent. It has happened basically all of my life since I learned to speak up, which is not one hundred percent of my life, but –

Sarah: I know all the words to this song, yes.

Courtney: Yeah. You know, like, I, I’m, I’m an intensely shy person around people I don’t know, but once I have, like, a little bit of comfort, then I’m like, you know, six out of seven kids, and so I, I know that, like, no one will hear me unless I’m EXTREMELY LOUD!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: Like, I think that explains like ninety-eight percent of, like, what you see about me? It’s like, I’m six out of seven kids. Nobody would listen to me ever if I didn’t have strong reasons backed up by receipts, said extremely loudly.

Sarah: You’re also six out of seven siblings who are extremely intelligent and extraordinary in their own ways.

Courtney: Yeah, that is also true.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, one of your, one of your siblings is a MacArthur grant recipient, right?

Courtney: Yes. Yeah.

Sarah: Like, like, arguing with a literal genius is not easy.

Courtney: Yeah, well, she’s, she’s, she’s actually one of the easier ones to get along with.

Sarah: That’s why she got the grant!

[Laughter]

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: She learned! [Laughs]

Courtney: Yeah, well, I should say, easier for me. [Laughs] Does not necessarily mean easier for others!

[Laughter]

Courtney: Yeah, we tend to be on the same, she and I tend to be on the same sort of like general wavelength, and so she’ll ask me questions. She’s like, I don’t know why I’m asking you; you’re just going to tell me what I want to do, and I was like, that’s why you’re asking me!

Sarah: Well, yeah!

Courtney: I have some very strong-willed people in my family so it’s, it’s, it’s like, imagine, like, a family of seven people who are very different from Courtney but have many of the same characteristics of, like, you know, nitpickiness and, like, whatever. Yeah. And you get Courtney.

Sarah: There was a time when all this was happening – as you know, when you, when you browse something and your, your Google remembers what you’re looking at, it serves you up similar things, and there would be times when I would open the browser on my phone, and it would just be news article after news article of you.

Courtney: Oh.

Sarah: I’d be like, oh, there’s Courtney’s face. Oh, more Courtney. There’s, wow! Okay! And now it’s on this site, and now it’s on this site. What was your reaction to that, and what was your family’s reaction to that? Were they like, holy shit? Who do we need to kick ass here?

Courtney: So my reaction – like I said, I have delayed emotional reaction, reactions to things, and my reaction was basically this: I’m so glad I got good professional photos done?

Sarah: [Laughs] It is a great photo! That is not wrong!

Courtney: I said the same thing. Like, like, oh my God! I am so glad that I have, like, like – it’s like a decent picture!

Sarah: It’s a great picture!

Courtney: I’m cool with it! Okay.

Sarah: You look, you look so friendly and –

Courtney: And it’s everywhere!

Sarah: Yeah, you look great!

Courtney: It’s everywhere! You know, like, so, so that’s, that was basically my reaction. Like, like, if I have to look at my own face, like, okay, it’s, it’s a decent version of my face. I’m taking it! I’m taking it! I, I realize that’s probably not, like, the intellectual response you’re looking for?

Sarah: No, that is the exact response I would have too. It is a great picture. Like, it’s actually in my notes: make sure to tell Courtney it’s a great picture.

Courtney: [Laughs] Yeah, so I, I basically, like ninety-eight percent of, of my reaction was like, I don’t want to read this. Like, I don’t, I, I didn’t want to read about it, so I avoided –

Sarah: Don’t blame you!

Courtney: – the majority of stuff. In terms of my family’s reaction, we, we had a, a New Year’s – my family gets together every New Year’s, like, all of us, like, seven kids, all the grandkids. It’s a lot of people in one place. And, you know, I told them about it from the beginning, and they were just like, okay. You know, whatever. I, it, there was, there wasn’t really a sense of like, we need to go kick ass for you? It was just like, okay, well, you know, you probably already kicked their ass it looks like, so we’ll just, like, we’ll just, like, play games; you want to play a game with us? So yeah.

Sarah: Which is a good response to have! Like –

Courtney: Yeah!

Sarah: – let’s go play checkers.

Courtney: Like, the thing is, the thing is, if I had asked them for help, they would have been, like, there, but I, I mostly just wanted to be distracted, and I –

Sarah: Yeah!

Courtney: – don’t want this to be my life. Like, here I am with my family, and we have, like, we’ve, we’ve got shit to do! You know?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Courtney: It’s like, like, we, we had Avalon to play. Also, you know, just for the record, they asked me how I was doing, and I said, I’m fine! So. [Laughs]

Sarah: So one of the questions that I’ve had from people in my community, people on my, my podcast Patreon, are, what can, what can readers do? What, what do we do to move this community forward?

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And I, I don’t have an easy answer for that! And I was wondering if that’s a question you’ve also received.

Courtney: I have. I, I’ve received this question often, and I don’t have an easy answer either, because it’s not an easy thing.

Sarah: Nope! Sure isn’t.

Courtney: It is a, it’s truly shitty thing, in fact, and if we had easy answers to any of this, we would know what was going on. And I think, I think that the, to the extent that there is an answer, and I’m not sure that there is one, I think the answer is, like, work to be less racist and to reduce the amount of racism in your community. That’s literally the only thing. Like, because what we’re butting up against here is this hard problem that I mentioned earlier that was in, like, the last part of the diversity report, like, bunches of people are racist! What do we do about it? Like, I don’t know! Like, one of the things that I think this has really underscored for me is that you cannot actually make someone less racist. And this is, this is one of those things like, I am such a process person in so many ways, it’s like, oh, don’t like this? Here’s a process for you!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: I’m going to fix it with a process! And, like, there is no process!

Sarah: There’s no manual.

Courtney: And – it’s not just that there’s no manual. There is a manual! But you can hand it to people and they’re like, okay, I read it; I hate it. Ugh.

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: Nothing! Nothing you can do about somebody who determinedly does not want to change, right? Nothing. There is no process. And so, like, I think your choices at this point are, you know, what do you do with RWA – question mark. I think there are a lot of people in RWA who mean well? I think there are a lot of people in RWA who are committed to diversity. And I think there are a lot of people in RWA who have not examined what it means to be in an anti-racist community and what it means to be in one that is supporting white supremacy.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And the, the group of people that exists there is vastly overlapping. So I think one of the issues with RWA is this: I think a lot of people of color are going to leave, because it’s just not a safe place to be. Right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And I think a lot of white people – not, not all white people – I think a lot of white people, including some very well-meaning white people, are going to see all the people of color leaving, and they’re going to say, well, we have to prove that this place is safe, so I’m going to stay here and make it better. And I’m going to tell you that what you are doing at this point is reinforcing white supremacy when that happens. And you don’t want to hear that, and it’s going to make you mad to hear that a group of all-white people staying in RWA and continuing to give money to an organization that is white by design at this point, you know – like, they specifically did a thing knowing the effect that this would have on the community of color.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: I think you’re going to have to figure out how to get out of RWA, if RWA can’t get itself out of this nosedive. And I don’t think it can! And, and I don’t think anyone wants to hear that their multicultural chapter that they worked so hard to diversify, if all the, if all the people of color leave because they won’t stay in RWA Nationals, that you are propping up white supremacy to stay, but you are. So that’s, that’s my only hard thing that I’m going to say, that –

Sarah: Mm.

Courtney: – if RWA doesn’t figure out how to get rid of white supremacy, it’s a white supremacist organization. And right now it doesn’t look like they’re even trying.

Sarah: No. As, as I said in my conversation with, with, with HelenKay, she pointed out, you have people who are from the multicultural and inclusive chapter that, it’s founded –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – on activism and advocacy.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: They are working to save RWA. They are trying to fix it; they are trying to advocate for saving what’s left –

Courtney: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – if anything is left, because one of the things that’s damaged is the immeasurable advocacy element. You can’t save –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – how much an organization has in terms of influence. You can’t measure that, but you know that it has to have been lost in a substantial portion –

Courtney: Yes!

Sarah: – after this.

Courtney: Well, more importantly, you know, RWA had a chance to advocate for major publishers about what they were going to do to diversify their industry –

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: – and we, RWA had taken steps, and I don’t think they were sufficient, but they were steps, right? RWA had taken steps to push publishers to think about things, and now they have absolutely, like, no ground to stand on! What publisher is going to say, oh yes, I will listen to you about diversity? Like, come on!

Sarah: Is there anything you would like to happen next or soon? Is there anything that you would like to see?

Courtney: I would like to not have to be in charge of doing it. [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, okay!

Courtney: That’s, that’s, like, I don’t know. I don’t know; I don’t have the answers. I spent four years trying to figure out what the answers were. I obviously didn’t do a very good job of it. It’s time to leave Courtney alone and let somebody else have a whack at it.

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, I, I would disagree that you didn’t do a good job of it, because, as I said when I initially wrote about this, it wouldn’t hurt so much if there hadn’t been real progress, if there hadn’t been changes that had been made. If it hadn’t made forward momentum –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – it wouldn’t hurt so much to see it lost? And I don’t think, I, I do not want you to feel like you are in charge of anything. One of the questions that Diana Neal from CIMRWA asked – rhetorically –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – is, what do I need to see to feel comfortable with RWA? What do I need to see RWA do to make it feel like progress has been made again in the right direction? And I, I don’t know the answer to that.

Courtney: I, I think there is an answer to that, but I’m not sure what it is, you know.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: So here’s the thing: one of the things RWA is going to have to do is reach out to all the many groups of people who were wronged by this. And there’s so many –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – in so many ways. And to ma-, take meaningful measures to undo the harm that they’ve done.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And I, at this point, like, you know, we’re sorry isn’t going to cut it! Like, there needs to be more than just an apology, and they haven’t even gotten to the apology stage yet! Like, the most we’ve gotten is like, we’re sorry that we lost your trust, and it’s like, like, this is such a meaningless statement. You could talk about why you’ve lost our trust and what you’re going to do to prevent it from ever happening again, but, like, you know, like – [exasperated sigh]. I think one of the big problems RWA faces right now is that, like, there’s a pretty hefty bar that you have to cross to become RWA President, and it was already difficult in regular times, finding somebody who met that bar who was willing to devote, like, how much of their life to running this stupid ship, which is a terrible job, for the, you know, the overwhelming pay of zero dollars.

Sarah: Yep. The, as HelenKay and I were saying, the people who were uncomfortable before are now very comfortable.

Courtney: And they’re very comfortable; they’re delightedly comfortable.

Sarah: Oh yeah. They got rid of all those problems.

Courtney: Yep.

Sarah: Ugh!

What is next for you?

Courtney: I’m going to Korea to watch Yuzuru Hanyu skate in the Four Continents.

Sarah: Okay, my next question is, and what’s up with ice skating? So I’m glad that you have hit that question too. You’re going to Korea to see ice skating?

Courtney: I am! I wasn’t going to go, but then Yuzuru Hanyu announced that he was going to Four Continents in Korea, which he hasn’t gone in several years. This was, like, on the 22nd or the 21st – huh – of December, and I was like, well, I absolutely should not go, but as long as I really buckle down and concentrate for the next month, I could really get everything in place –

Sarah: Oh!

Courtney: – and it’ll be perfect.

Sarah: Well, shit.

Courtney: Ha! So I bought, so I bought, like, plane tickets and whatever, and I was like, I’m going to make this happen. Whatever. And then like two days later this whole thing with RWA blew up in my face, and I was like – [sighs] – really, Universe, really.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: But it’s okay. I’m going to go see Yuzuru Hanyu skate, and he’s going to make it all better.

Sarah: It really seems like from the way you’ve talked about skating that it has become a place of great solace and happiness for you.

Courtney: [Sighs] You know, it is and it isn’t. Because, look, skating is exactly like the rest of the world in that it ha-, it’s racist, but there’s more men in it, so there’s also more sexual harassment. I mean, there’s, like, so much fat-shaming. There’s, like, there, there’s –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Courtney: I have to ignore – and I don’t; I do a very bad job of ignoring things that piss me off. Like, I know everyone has feet of clay, and I’m sure this includes Yuzuru Hanyu. You know, he’s just delightful, and I hope he never really truly, deeply disappoints me. We’ll see.

Sarah: And there’s always Yuri.

Courtney: Yeah, you know. Yeah.

Sarah: There’s always Yuri on Ice. Can always rewatch!

Courtney: Yeah, I have rewatched Yuri on Ice a great number of times.

Sarah: I can understand that!

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: While you are not fine, unilaterally, across the board –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – at the moment, are you okay?

[Long silence]

Courtney: Yes. I suppose I am. I mean, I think I am. I, I think it is teaching me coping skills.

Sarah: Oh, just a bit!

Courtney: Yeah. And I think it has been – you know, so the interesting thing is, like, this happened, and then, like, this whole thing with American Dirt came up, you know, starting in the last handful of weeks as –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – the momentum grows –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – towards the juggernaut of, you know, Oprah Winfrey Book Club pick, etc., etc., and just about every Latina that I follow is like, what the hell are you doing?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: This is so offensive. And then of course there’s, like, this backlash to it that’s like, how dare you try and censor people? And I found this entire discussion to be – and I hate using this word, but I really think it’s accurate – extremely triggering for me?

Sarah: I, I think that is entirely the right word.

Courtney: Like, it’s a really intensely traumatic discussion for me –

Sarah: Yeah!

Courtney: – not just because this book fucking sucks and this person got a million dollars, but like, like, I just really intensely identify with the people who are criticizing the book and getting, like, endless waves of shit for it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – from people who call them, saying that they’re censoring and, you know, purity culture and, like, all this stuff. I just, like, I, I, I, yeah. And I, I’m so not – I don’t think I said that much about it online, but, like, it’s, like, everything about it is just misery. But it’s, it’s very interesting, because it’s easier for me to process what’s going on there than it is sort of like what’s going on with me? So it’s been kind of like this indirect route into my own feelings?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: But yeah.

Sarah: Landing right on a bruise.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: An active one, yeah. It’s all, and it’s all part of the same structural pattern.

Courtney: It’s really amazing to me how easy it is for people to cancel a woman of color for saying, like, one thing that’s, like, kind of mean?

Sarah: Yeah.

Silver: Meow!

Courtney: Hi, Silver!

Sarah: Oh my gosh, cat and dog on the podcast? Hell yeah!

Courtney: Yeah!

Sarah: Well, of course, you know, cats have a lot to say about human bullshit – mine does, at least.

Courtney: My cat is like, feed me.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: Oh, you seem very sad. What you need is a cat to climb in your lap, lightly claw your face, and remind you that my food bowl is not empty, but it’s half full now, and you should refill it.

Sarah: Oh yeah, when, when, when Wilbur can see the bottom of his food bowl, it is intolerable.

Courtney: Totally intolerable.

Sarah: Is there anything else that you want to talk about or say? Open floor.

Courtney: That’s, like, really open ended.

Sarah: Yeah! And I usually don’t ask questions like that, but I want to make sure that there isn’t something that you wanted to talk about that I didn’t ask about.

Courtney: You know, okay, actually, so now that you say that, I, I want to clear up something about something that we talked about earlier, ‘cause it’s just occurred to me. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. When people ask what they could do as readers –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – I just want to sort of spell out one of the dynamics that happens here, and the discussion about American Dirt brought it up too. So I want to start off by saying, like, I’m going to be using an analogy, and I’m not trying to say that you should treat your waitstaff badly, because I very much believe the opposite. My father-in-law is one of those people who goes to a restaurant, and he loves going to restaurants because he can tell waiters his jokes, and they’re not off-color, but they’re just very bad. Right, they’re not funny. And he, he loves going to restaurants because nobody laughs at his jokes, but when he goes to a restaurant he can tell his joke to the waitress, and she’s going to laugh. Right?

Sarah: Because she’s being paid to be there.

Courtney: She’s being paid to be there, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And it is her job to see to it, to his comfort. Now, in general, like, people should not be assholes to waitstaff, but when they are, waitstaff are expected to be very polite in response. And I just want to point out that one of the things I keep seeing people say, or that people, like, try and tell me is like, Courtney, you weren’t polite enough.

Sarah: Ughhh!

Courtney: And the thing is, like, you know, you can tell people about tone-policing and blah-blah-blah. It’s like, well, but you would be communicating with people more effectively if you were always polite, and the thing I want to point out about this dynamic, I want you to stop doing this shit. Right? If, if you are doing this shit, if you’re a person asking what you can do, I want you to stop tone-policing, and the reason I want you to do that is because it’s not about whether people are polite or not; it’s because the expectation you’re reinforcing is that people of color are waitstaff, and it is our job to make you comfortable. It is not our job to make you comfortable, and it is, in fact, white supremacy that makes you think it is our job to make you comfortable. The truth of the matter is we’re in an uncomfortable situation, and your racism makes us uncomfortable, and when we make you uncomfortable by pointing it out, all we’re doing is redistributing the load to where it belongs. So stop telling people that you have to make people comfortable in order for them to address their racism. That is, in fact, itself an act of racism that reinforces white supremacy and treats people of color like waitstaff who are forced to do your bidding. Thanks.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this four-episode series, “RWA: One Month Later.” You can find all four episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you to Courtney Milan for her time and for her continued advocacy. She did not mention it, but I am going to: her latest book is Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure.

If you would like to get in touch with me, you can find me at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you if you have thoughts or reactions to this series.

And I want to thank our podcast Patreon community, whose support makes transcripts of this series and of every episode possible. If you would like to have a look at the Patreon, it is patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Thank you again for listening. I know this is a lot of audio, but I hope that this series was helpful and thought-provoking and interesting for those of us who have been following RWA intently for the last month or so.

As I mentioned in the intro, I will be taking Friday, February 7th, off, and I will be back on February 14th, on Valentine’s Day with Amanda. We will be back on our regular weekly schedule after that.

Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to listen to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[contemplative music]