538. Jane Austen, Anthropologist, with Nikki Payne

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 538 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today my guest is Nikki Payne, debut author of Pride and Protest, a contemporary retelling of Pride and Prejudice! It’s set in DC between an activist DJ and a CEO developer, and I know many of you just hit pause to go find this book, so it’s in the show notes; do not worry. Nikki’s also a tech anthropologist, so this conversation hits on, like, major current events like Twitter and how Jane Austen was an amateur anthropologist and shade queen. This conversation is very wide-reaching and extremely fun, so I hope you enjoy it!

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It’s time to get started with the podcast. If you have some travel this weekend or you need some extra quiet time, this is a nice, long episode for your listening pleasure. Let’s visit with Nikki Payne, Jane Austen, and me!

[music]

Nikki Payne: My name is Nikki Payne. I am the author of Pride and Protest. What do I do? By day I am an anthropologist, and I ask a lot of important people really silly questions to try to get to some answers, but when I’m not being an anthropologist I am thinking of ways to retell amazing stories and, and thinking about how we repeat and repeat folklore and stories over and over. And Jane Austen is a perfect example of that, and Pride and Protest is actually one of those stories where I’m trying to tell a new story by telling an old story.

Sarah: I love this. Also, my job is also to ask people questions.

Nikki: Yay!

Sarah: It’s like, like, that’s a major part of my job too.

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, first of all, most importantly, happy release day!

Nikki: Thank you!

Sarah: – book is out! Isn’t it just absolutely terrifying? [Laughs]

Nikki: It is terrifying. I want to puke, but I also want to peek through the puke to say, like, do you like it? Do you love me? [Laughs] You know, so –

Sarah: Yeah!

Nikki: – it’s very, it’s, it’s a confusing time.

Sarah: But oh my goodness, I have seen this book everywhere? I’m –

Nikki: Yes!

Sarah: I have seen it mentioned by so many people, and you’re the debut Phenomenal Book Club pick! Ahhh!

Nikki: Yes!

Sarah: Congratulations!

Nikki: Yesss! Oh my gosh, the Phenomenal team is so funny, first of all. One of the things that I am, one of my only skill sets is Jane Austen memes, and – [laughs] – there is –

Sarah: This is a good skill set.

Nikki: Isn’t – right. This is one of my few Jane Austen memes, and I also combine that with, like, my Black Twitter street cred, so, like, my little lane of, like, Jane Austen memes are just extremely specific and strange, so yes.

Sarah: I love everything about this.

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: So what will readers find inside Pride and Protest? What is your, like, elevator pitch, as they say in the industry?

Nikki: Ooh, okay. So I think we start off with an, a well-meaning, want-to-be activist who has her heart in the right place and doesn’t have the oomph behind it, and she wants to make an impact, and there is a seemingly immovable force in front of her, right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: This individual who has to deliver this one, one last job, you know? [Laughs] Before he gets out of this game for good, right, and, and she is trying to make a name for herself, and she has to, she, she feels like she has to essentially show everyone who she is. She’s, that, that she’s going to be listened to, and that she, what she feels is important, and she feels like she has to do that by countering this movement. And it starts off hilariously, because she gets a lot of things wrong?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Nikki: He also gets a lot of things wrong as well, and –

Sarah: Story checks out, yep.

Nikki: [Laughs] Story, story checks out. I think there’s a, there’s a lot of, of the, the classic, like, if you love Jane Austen, you’re going to be like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme? Like, ooh! I, I know! I remember that! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: If you love Jane Austen you’re going to recognize all the characters and all the beats. If you don’t, you actually don’t need to! Like, if ninth grade English traumatized you, honey, we’re fine. We’re fine!

[Laughter]

Nikki: Right, you can still read this and not know a thing about it.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: There’s just this sprinkling of, like, I’m not supposed to want you! Little bit of forbidden –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – desires as well. And I think it’s fun and, like, sexy and funny more than anything.

Sarah: I have to ask about the hero’s name.

Nikki: Yes.

Sarah: He is Dorsey Fitzgerald, which, okay, first of all, that’s brilliant, but also is that a reference to Jack Dorsey from Twitter?

Nikki: [Laughs] Oh gosh! Oh gosh! I, I would love if that, if that were, but I was trying to make a, a crossover. I was trying to make a crossover from another reference, from his actual, like, Filipino name? So, like, one of the, one of the interesting aspects of this Mr. Darcy is that he’s kind of a part of this transracial, transcultural, transnational adoption –

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: – spree, and he’s, like, grappling with his own place in society, like kind of what it means.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: Which is why, like, the original mistake that, that our heroine makes is so, is so triggering for him, right, because of his own place in, in society.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: And one of the, one of the, the reasons why this Dorsey is so, like, dear to my heart, so, like, like I told you before, I’m an anthropologist in, you know, by training, and I was doing some research on aesthetics in power and, like, how people attach and associate to things that they seem are, are, feel are beautiful, and there’s some dating app data, and what that dating app data found, just kind of across the nation, was that Black women and Asian men were the least responded to in these dating apps. Like, they –

Sarah: Oh!

Nikki: – they were perceived to have, like, less sexual capital in these digital spaces, right? And I, as I, I was starting to, like, noodle on a new project, and Jane Austen is always my comfort, and I wanted to ask this question like, hey, what would happen if we made this, like, archetypical brooding, super-desirable hero an Asian male, right?

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: What would happen if we made this, like, delightful, desirable woman a Black woman? And I just started with this kind of experiment to see how much of Jane Austen would stay if you just ripped out those foundations?

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: And it was remarkably faithful!

Sarah: Wow! That is fascinating! So that’s your, that was your entry point, this data from dating apps about –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – who is perceived as having less sexual capital. That was your point of entry.

Nikki: Absolutely.

Sarah: What were some of the easiest parts when you were going through writing this story? Because one of the things with, that’s so, like, challenging about Pride and Prejudice is that everyone has very strong feelings about it. We are all very, very attached to it! Do not monkey with tradition! And people will, like, they get heated about the, you know, Colin Firth versus James McAvoy; like the, the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice and the Jennifer Ehle – people will, people will get maaad. They get, they get –

Nikki: Oh – [laughs]

Sarah: Very strong!

Nikki: Were you in the chats for this latest Persuasion? Because it was a bloodbath. It was a bloodbath, man!

Sarah: Oh my stars!

Nikki: Yeah. So absolutely. So, to your point, though, one of the, there are a couple of things that I felt like needed to happen – table stakes. One, Dorsey had to have a stick up his ass. Right, he just, he couldn’t be chill; he couldn’t be like Matthew McConaughey, “All right, all right, all right!” Like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Nikki: You know?

Sarah: That is, that is a different book.

Nikki: [Laughs] Yeah, he can’t –

Sarah: Darcy comes with a stick, and it’s in his –

Nikki: Exactly!

Sarah: He cannot avoid it!

Nikki: Darcy comes with a stick! Right? And I also felt like, whatever happened, that disastrous display, that disastrous moment where he’s trying to tell her how much he loves her but does it in the worst possible way? Also had to happen.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: Right, because it was this inflection point where he realized that, oh, wait a minute! I’m maybe not that dope! I need to – [laughs] – I need to, you know, rearrange some things, right? One of the, the best things about this story is that there are two incredibly bright and interesting people who are willing to allow their minds to be changed about a situation and about a person, and if that moment doesn’t happen where, where it’s imperative that they do –

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: – it, it would be, it would be hard to keep the, the structure of the, of the novel, so yes.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Nikki: Absolutely, that, that proposal had to happen.

I had to have a Wick. I didn’t care if he had, like, a, an awesome backstory; I’m just like, I need a good, juicy bad guy. Like, I just need a juicy, unequivocal bad guy. Sometimes I love, like, characters that just, like, don’t have an arc. You know how there’s, like, this thing of, like, you know, if you have a, a bad guy, like, give us a reason why he’s bad and, you know, all these things, and I try to give Wick some depth, but I’m just like, he’s juicy. He’s juicy, and I want to keep that, I want to keep him being a little self-serving, so.

Sarah: Yeah, he’s – pardon my language – he’s a fuckboy with backstory.

Nikki: Right on! He absolutely is a fuckboy, and I’m like, if Wick’s not a fuckboy, what are we doing?

Sarah: Right?

Nikki: He’s so – what are we even doing?

Sarah: He’s like one of the top three of all time fuckboys.

Nikki: He really, he really is. He really is. And in the 1995 he’s played much in a, a much more like hapless charm, like charming person who just, like, lies a lot, got into a little gambling trouble, you know?

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: Little bit of a huckster, but –

Sarah: But nothing sticks to him.

Nikki: Nothing sticks to him, exactly.

Sarah: Mm-hmm, yep.

Nikki: Yeah. That second one – do you have a favorite?

Sarah: [Sucks in breath] I like them both for different things. It’s hard to say, because I have the Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley permanently downloaded to my phone because when I am in the most stressful place I put on the headphones and I turn on the movie, and I’m just like, okay. It’s all good.

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, if there’s turbulence on the plane, you will find me –

Nikki: Huh!

Sarah: – watching the Pride and Prejudice movie.

Nikki: Yes, ma’am!

Sarah: Right?

Nikki: Here’s the thing that I feel like the Jane Austen community is just like, I’m, you know, here we are; it’s just us in, in the walls here; I’ll say it: the 2005 delivers the swoon! It delivers the swoon!

Sarah: Yes, ma’am.

Nikki: It just, it makes your stomach flip; it delivers. It makes your heart tremble; it does that –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – and as much as I love a Colin Firth and a, and a distant smile from across the room? Like, the 1995 version is for, like, hey, you know what? I, I’m going to, I’m going to dare to be eight hours long. [Laughs] You know what I mean? Like –

Sarah: That’s right!

Nikki: – I, I’m going to luxuriate in Jane Austen, in the deep –

Sarah: I’ve got a budget, and I’ve got time.

Nikki: [Laughs] I’ve got a budget; I’ve got time!

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: I want to know what they had for dinner. Like, that level, fine.

Sarah: Yep!

Nikki: But delivering the swoon is 2005! I mean it’s –

Sarah: Absolutely. And the 2005 does so much with economy of storytelling?

Nikki: It’s true.

Sarah: It gets a lot done in just one scene or one image, and it, it, like, even with the way that they show time passing around the characters, I’m like, wow, this is really clever! And yet I love the BBC version because if you just want to luxuriate in that world you can just, it’s, it’s eight hours; you’ve got time.

Nikki: All day. You got time, baby! All day!

Sarah: That’s right! All day!

Nikki: [Laughs] Exactly!

Sarah: Now, I want to ask you about being an anthropologist, because this is so interesting, especially the intersection of anthropology and Jane Austen. And I know from your bio you are a tech anthropologist, which I, I have to say, it must be really boring to be a tech anthropologist right now. It’s just really boring; there’s nothing happening in the tech world at all?

Nikki: Oh, no. Yeah.

Sarah: Like, not at all illustrative of the human, of human nature –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – and the ways in which we put people on pedestals and – yeah, nothing’s happening right now; it must be real boring.

Nikki: Let me tell you something –

[Laughter]

Nikki: This is the Wild, the absolute Wild West right now. Particularly to be in the tech space?

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Nikki: Oh my gosh. So I was a researcher –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: – at Meta, and they are attempting to build an entirely new reality, right? I mean, can you imagine being an anthropologist in this space? Being able to ask the types of questions that you want to ask: how are people building and creating their own identities? How are they making an avatar? What does it mean for individuals to create avatars that they feel safe entering into the Metaverse in? That’s another thing! Like, women and people of color do these very interesting things to their avatars to be safe in these virtual spaces, right.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Nikki: So I did a creation; oftentimes, particularly social media, like, social media platforms are, in, in a lot of ways, the new public forum, right, so it’s interesting to have anthropologists, particularly cultural anthropologists, in this space, because that’s essentially what we do: we just sit and hang around campfires – [laughs] – and come in and talk to people about what they’ve seen and what they know to translate that, to translate that work. So being a tech anthropologist is literally the most interesting thing in the universe right now, to me.

Sarah: There is no shortage of data!

Nikki: Yeah!

Sarah: Just endless data! It’s like a fire hose right in the face!

[Laughter]

Nikki: Right! Right! That’s precisely what it is.

Sarah: So if people don’t know what anthropology is, like we’ve all heard the word, how do you describe anthropology to someone who’s not familiar with the idea?

Nikki: Honey, did you – ? Let, let’s do this, because, let’s nerd out all day! Okay, so –

Sarah: Yeah, I’m here for all nerding, thousand percent.

Nikki: Okay, okay. So –

Sarah: Bring it on!

Nikki: – anthropology is oftentimes described as four fields, right? So let’s go into the four fields. First, archaeology, right?

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: Anthropology: hey, what did humans use? What tools did humans use? What artifacts did humans, like, use in the past; what do they use now? Right? Archaeology is always about a thousand years ago.

And then there’s how did humans speak and talk? That’s linguistic anthropology. What is slang? How is language changing? How’s technology changed the way we talk? Right, how’s other types of technology that we wouldn’t consider technology, like a road, changed the way people spoke and connected across different towns?

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: Right, so linguistic anthropology.

And then there’s physical anthropology, and that’s associated with, you know, our human body. Like, if you’ve seen that show Bones, right? She was a physical anthropologist, a forensic anthropologist in particular, and what they do is focus on the human body and also the human, the, the species of humans and pre-humans like Lucy and Neanderthals, right, so the, this, this is the, the family of humanoid, like – I, I’m trying to think of the word here, but, like, human-esque, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: So, so then there, that’s physical anthropology, and what I do is cultural anthropology. And these are anthropologists that are really focused on phenomena that are happening now? Sometimes it’s happened in the past and you’re talking to people about their, like, cultural memory of something now –

Sarah: Right.

Nikki: – and oftentimes we’re asking questions, building phenomena, and, and trying to, like, really investigate a large question around society.

Sarah: So you have humans with stuff –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – humans with language, humans with body –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – and humans with how we interact with each other and all that other stuff.

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: And that’s where you are located.

Nikki: That’s where I’m located. Absolutely.

Sarah: Wow, there’s absolutely nothing to talking about there.

Nikki: [Laughs] Oh, oh man!

Sarah: It’s just a wasteland of nothing! [Laughs]

Nikki: Oh man! Oh my goodness! I mean, we could be all day. We could be all day!

Sarah: We could be all day just talking about what happened on Twitter today!

Nikki: [Gasps] Oh my gosh! Can we –? That, that’s an entirely different podcast, but we can sit and talk for hours about kind of what, what’s happening in the, the tech world right now, with Twitter right now, and, like, these are phenomena that look remarkably similar to other ones that don’t actually mimic technology. Right?

Sarah: Yeah. So what are some things – actually, that’s interesting, as I’ve been thinking, I know that nothing is new, right? If you’re, if you’re retelling Jane Austen, if you’re buying a private service that functions sometimes as a public utility, all of this, nothing, nothing is new here. This has, this has happened before; we’ve traveled this way before; and we have a lot to learn. What are the things that you see happening with Twitter that have happened before?

Nikki: Oh, that’s such, oh, that’s such a good question. One of the ways that people in power attempt to consolidate power, right? So we can think of Twitter as our own unique American experience, and, like, and social media as a thing that’s uniquely American, but if you were to, if you were to look at ancient, ancient times and the way that new tyrants attempt to build a following, the first thing that they are able to do and control are the people who come to them with news and information.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: This is court jester; this is the, the messenger who’s come from another city –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – right. That, those individuals are oftentimes the first people to either get their head chopped off for saying bad news or are the, the line of people that can, can, can, that are within the king’s or the, that ruler’s purview –

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: – to manage.

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: And it’s really, like, whether you’re talking about, like, a farm tribe in, like, ancient Sumer or America right now with Twitter, like, the means of communication and the, and the, the way in which a story is told and being able to control the story is oftentimes the, the very beginning –

Sarah: The very first thing.

Nikki: – of how individuals begin to consolidate power.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: Right? So, like, the story is everything.

Sarah: Oh, the story is everything, and it’s not just controlling the narrative; it’s controlling every means of a narrative being built.

Nikki: You’re absolutely right. You can look back any culture over time; the spreading of, of the word and, and how people manage the story and who got to manage the story? It’s often the story of the victors.

Sarah: Yep. And who got to write it down, and who got to be alive long enough to write it down.

Nikki: You are right.

Sarah: Yep. It’s very depressing to think that we’ve been here before and we still haven’t learned anything.

Nikki: Oh man. Oh man, that’s the human story.

Together: Right?

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow! We haven’t learned a thing! Yay, humanity –

Nikki: Right?

Sarah: – go us.

Nikki: Oh, right. Anthropology is sad, right. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! Anthropology is very sad! Oh my gosh!

Nikki: That’s, that is sad. Move away!

Sarah: Going to live in a yurt in the middle of nowhere and have no anthropology. People are going to find my remains and be like, wow, she was boring. That was how I wanted it.

Nikki: [Laughs] Nothing happened with her.

Sarah: Yeah! [Laughs] She was boring! That was what she wanted.

So one of the things that Erin at Penguin Random House, Erin Galloway told me was that you see Jane Austen as an anthropologist as well! You see her –

Nikki: Oh, I do!

Sarah: I am so curious about this, especially in the ways in which she was able to observe a society that I know nothing about, that I would never be part of, that I cannot understand, and if I were to be dropped into that society I don’t know any of the rules; I would screw it up; I would be the fastest-ostracized rando lady in that town because I would not know the rules and I would be like, what am I doing here? I am fascinated by the idea that Austen was able to observe the society she was in in a way that still resonates with us? How many hundreds of years later? It’s amazing! So can you tell me more about your perspective of Jane Austen as an anthropologist?

Nikki: Oh my gosh, I love this; I could talk about this all day. So –

Sarah: Please do!

Nikki: This is one of the things that appeals to me most about Jane Austen: she has this ability to incorporate these, like, very large ideas, like, into tiny, tiny interactions, right?

Sarah: Oh, so true.

Nikki: Like, Sense and Sensibility? Like, she can have an entire argument about romanticism versus rationalism when she’s just snapping on Marianne and her dead leaves, right? [Laughs] And, like, she’s, it’s, it’s full of, like, these really, really sharp observations that are happening right now. Like, at the time, those were real debates happening, like, are you a rational creature, right? Are you a creature kind of wrapped up in those other sensibilities, right? So these are like these large debates that are happening at the time, and she has these observations, and her work is, like, super rich because her observations are extremely sharp and, and pulled out of this perspective from, like, just outside of the mainstream. Right, so she’s, like, she’s, she wasn’t really a part of the class that she wrote about, right. She was, like, just a rung below, and she was just below enough, right, to just absolutely sit on the sidelines and be like, this dummy. Right? Like – [laughs] – one, one of the things that I often say about, when I’m reading Jane Austen versus reading some of my other, like, favorite heroes, is the difference between Jane Austen and her, like, anthropological stance is that when she’s writing about these characters she knows who the assholes are, right?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Nikki: She, she knows who the assholes are, right? So no shade against, like, the Brontë sisters, but, like, if you’re reading Jane Eyre, right, like, you don’t really get the sense that, you know, that Rochester is, like, not okay. You know, like –

Sarah: Like, my dude, your wife is in the attic.

Nikki: [Laughs] Yeah, like, there are a lot of things not okay right now, right?

Sarah: How are we not debating the, the, the heroism of this guy who locked his wife in the attic?! [Laughs]

Nikki: Come on! No, no shade against anyone who loves the Brontë sisters, but one of the, the things that I love about Jane Austen is that she can, like, you know that she knows who the assholes are in her story. Right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: Like, hypochondriacs that she loves snapping on; those individuals with enough wealth to waste, like, money on the presumption of, of non-wellness is something that she just plays with all the time.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Nikki: You know, as a person who wasn’t well herself a lot, right? Those individuals who had the freedom and money to barely kind of sniffle and have an army of doctors near them and on them is just something that she, like, peers at and notices, again from this outside area. So she’s just outside of society, which is, keenest points of being an anthropologists is just standing a little bit outside and being able to see something broadly. And she just pulled out these instances and was able to tell large stories about society in, like I said, these tiny interactions.

Sarah: And she was fluent in that society?

Nikki: Absolutely.

Sarah: I have this theory that everything is language? Like, codes of behavior are language, and the ability to interact in different cultures and different groups is a language, and one of the biggest problems, I think, with white supremacy is the assumption that white people belong and can enter in any space, and I’m like, none of us are fluent in all of these spaces. You can’t just walk into a space and presume fluency; you don’t have it! And just because you’re white doesn’t give you a, a hall pass for lack of fluency.

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: So, like, for example, with, with, with Jane Austen, she’ll make very, like, characters’ll make very pointed comments about where somebody’s wealth comes from, and if you can decode that you’re like, ohhh, that person is low class in her eyes because of where the wealth comes from.

Nikki: Okay, I have an entire theory about this. So this is, this is so interesting to me is that, like, oftentimes when I reread Jane Austen the thing that I notice so often is this very thing, is how precise she is about the money. Who has what? Like, sometimes these just read like receipts. Do – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yes, ma’am! Oh my God! Like, Jane Austen had all the receipts!

[Laughter]

Nikki: She had! She had the receipts and just like, this is his money; this is where he’s from; and, like, you can see that of course these, this is the marriage plot, like they’re writing about marriage in an interesting way, but, like, these were, like, economic novels.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Nikki: Right, they were novels in which you were describing someone’s, like, economic status and how one is able to traverse that in, like, really interesting ways. Like, you can literally read that without the marriage and read a ton into, like, economic politics of the time. So these are like, that’s another thing that I added in Pride and Protest is, it’s about the money, honey. Like –

Sarah: Oh, always.

Nikki: Like, where’s the money? Like, I, I talk about that a lot in, in my second novel as well; like, Jane Austen was clear that that is kind of what makes the world go round, and I don’t think she’s been wrong? [Laughs] You know, so, so I, I play with that perspective a little bit in the book.

Sarah: Yeah! And it even happens with, with, with Wickham. The story of his perfidy is not just that he tried to seduce Darcy’s sister; it’s that he was given a living and then gambled it away.

Nikki: Yes!

Sarah: You were given security –

Nikki: Yeah!

Sarah: – you were given security with zero effort on your part, and you frittered it away. That is the marker of a person who is –

Nikki: Preach!

Sarah: – low class. Yeah.

Nikki: Preach. That’s it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: That’s absolutely it. And that, and then he didn’t deserve heroism, right?

Sarah: No!

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: And for, and for Jane Austen, that was, that was as irredeemable as messing with, with Darcy’s sister.

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: And, and it was like layers of his moral failure that he could not –

Nikki: Yes!

Sarah: – appreciate the economic stability that he had just been given. Yep.

Nikki: You’re absolutely right. I mean, think of Willoughby, right?

Sarah: Yeah! Absolutely!

Nikki: He is charming. I mean, by all accounts he was in love. He was, you know, he had some baby mama drama, right? Like – [laughs] – he had some stuff –

Sarah: Little bit.

Nikki: Yeah, he had some, some stuff, but honestly, like, if you think about the writing in Sense and Sensibility, like, the outrage came from him, you know, being forced to, being in a, a financial situation in which he was forced to not marry Marianne.

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: You know? And being forced to marry this very wealthy person because he couldn’t get his financial shit together. And Jane –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: And Jane was like, I can’t, I can’t deal with it, you know? [Laughs]

Sarah: Nope.

Nikki: Like, I can accept these other things, but you can’t get your financial shit together, you’ve got to get out of here, you know?

Sarah: Yep! If you, if you cannot manage – ‘cause as everything functions on economics, right? You, your, your spouse, your children. Like, one of the great problems for the Bennet family is that the estate is entailed and they got all these girls running around!

Nikki: It is the original problem of the entire novel: how are we going to sustain ourselves?

Sarah: Absolutely. Absolutely, and how are we going to maintain our life that we love –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – and also not embarrass ourselves in front of the neighbors?

Nikki: Yeah!

Sarah: Very important part.

Nikki: It is.

Sarah: It is also a very important part of anthropology, isn’t it? The performance of your, your character in front of other people.

Nikki: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely! Like, social and societal shame, I mean, we’re, we’re still, like, pack animals in a way, right? And still is, one of the worst ways that you could potentially harm a human is social isolation, right.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely.

Nikki: Jails and, and solitary confinement? Oftentimes when, when we were just, you know, bipedal, one of the ways that when someone committed a crime, all you, like, the, the tribe just left them alone, right?

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: Or just shamed them.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: And so blending in and fitting in and being a part of society is not just nice to have; it’s actually quite crucial to the human psyche.

Sarah: Yes, and even though American culture emphasizes this individualism and you do it on your own, it’s actually utterly not true, and you cannot survive or thrive without community.

And I, I was saying this to my husband the other day: you know, I have not spent a lot of time on Twitter in the last, mmm, three, four years because it was a dumpster fire and it stressed me out, and I would doomscroll, and I could feel, like, my shoulders, like, approaching my ears, and my heart was in my throat, and I was like, why is Twitter so much fun right now? And I, my theory is that we all agree who the main character is –

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and we are all fine with ostracizing and making fun and dunking on Elon Musk. We all know who the main character is, ‘cause Twitter is like, you don’t want to be the main character. If you’re the main character on Twitter, you’re experiencing ostracization and shame and humiliation and everyone telling you how, all of the ways that you’ve messed up, and of course there’s 280 characters, zero nuance. So –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – being the main character is terrible, but when we all agree who the main character is, it’s very fun.

Nikki: Oh, I love that! Like, why is Twitter so fun right now? We all agree on the main character.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Nikki: Oh my gosh, world’s worst person in Westeros? Like, it’s – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah! We have identified the asshole –

Nikki: Right!

Sarah: – the king of all the assholes! Even Jane is like, yep, mm-hmm, that’s him.

Nikki: Like, yeah.

Together: Absolutely.

Sarah: That’s, hundred percent that guy. Yeah.

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow.

Nikki: Oh –

Sarah: Do you ever think about, like, Jane Austen resurrected and being on Twitter and being like, oh!?

Nikki: Okay, here’s a – you’re in my brain right now, because –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Nikki: – I constantly, I constantly think about how awesome she would be just on Twitter? I don’t know if she’s an Instagram girl, right? She’s, she’s all about the words, and she’s all about the pithy comments.

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: Do you know what I mean? I just think that Twitter would absolutely be her medium. She would just slay on Twitter. Like, I don’t think I would survive a Jane Austen, you know, running at me. You know, I would –

Sarah: Mm-mm.

Nikki: – [laughs] – I mean, think about, if Jane Austen put you in a book, what words would she use to describe you? You know, just like, I don’t want to be a part of it! You know, like, there’s a story where Cassandra, like, essentially kind of burned all of Jane’s letters, right.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: ‘Cause she was just like, oh no, like – [laughs] – these aren’t seeing the light of day.

Sarah: Nope.

Nikki: Because you know, you know, that Jane Austen would just, like, dunk – [laughs] – sorry. Just thinking about that, I just know the type of sister she was, and if the, if her sister was ride or die and burned those letters, then you know – [laughs] – come on!

Sarah: Jane had some things to say. [Laughs] A very long list.

Nikki: Yes! Yes!

Sarah: She had like a CVS receipt from the Regency era.

Nikki: Oh man.

Sarah: You know, people, people are afraid to be the subject of a Taylor Swift song; that’s nothing.

Nikki: Nothing! Nothing to do with – I mean, once Jane gets ahold of you, you don’t want that smoke. You really don’t.

Sarah: No, you do not.

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: So why do you call Jane the shade queen? I mean, I do not disagree, but why –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – do you call Jane the shade queen?

Nikki: She’s just, like, she has this, this way of just, like, burning people without the character’s knowledge, and sometimes without the reader’s – certain types of readers – knowledge. Right, so if you can think of, like, Mr. Collins –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: – right, who was an, you know, for all intents, doing the right thing, right, and, you know, he, he had the money, and he was going to go and the marry the sisters, and he was a religious guy, and he had the patronage of a, like – in all ways in society –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – he was great, right?

Sarah: He knew that on paper he looked like a, like a swipe right.

Nikki: Yeah, absolutely. Stand-up guy. But Jane Austen goes through so much pain to show us that he is a boob. [Laughs] You know what I mean? That he is an absolute – like, he had the money, right? He could have given them the economic stability, right?

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: But he was also just an ass, right? And, like, one of the things that I also like to say is, like, I, I call myself, like, Jane Austen’s sassy Black friend? Right?

[Laughter]

Nikki: You know that TV trope where, like, the, the, the person, that Black friend is kind of allowed to transgress propriety and, like, speak to the, the simple truths of a situation; like that Black friend’s always like, you’re in love with the boy, honey.

Sarah: Yep. Mm-hmm!

Nikki: You know, like, she just, like, kind of speak that truth to power, right, in a way that, like –

Sarah: And cut through all that code, yeah.

Nikki: Cut through the code, right, and, and say it in a way that you don’t kind of recognize as actually shade. I, I feel like this is what Jane Austen does; like, she just sits slightly outside of the British upper class and just critiques everything she sees, mostly to hilarious effect –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – right, and that’s, that’s one of the reasons why I also made my character Liza a DJ, because that, they represented a very specific role, particularly in Black culture, that they were, like in the morning they would be your opinion pieces; like, they were your op-eds; like, they were, would tell you what music is great –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: – and they just had these pert opinions, and they were kind of, they were able to transgress them, ‘cause, hey, it’s my job; I’m just telling the story; I’m just talking about the music, right.

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: So yeah, so that, that same idea of her, like, throwing shade and, and being able to kind of speak truth to power because it’s packaged in this, in this particular way, I just felt like she was great at it. I mean, I’m sassy Black friend, but she, she definitely would have been like, you know, sassy neighbor coming, you know? [Laughs] As, if she were a TV trope.

Sarah: Yep. And, and DJs also occupy a very specific position, because DJs have to distill so much different music and then curate what they’re picking and then take it and remix it and highlight the parts that they think are important, so you might take one line of a song and loop that five times and then build something out of that, but they have to know this broad expanse of what’s available before they can distill it into a remixed message.

Nikki: Oh. Oh my gosh, first of all, gorgeous. First of all, I wish I would have recorded that because –

Sarah: Oh, I am recording! Conveniently, right now!

[Laughter]

Nikki: That’s excellent! That’s gorgeous. That’s a gorgeous way of thinking of it, and, and if you think about a character with, you know, with, with, with her own kind of pert opinions and in, in classic literature she loves books, and she still loves books, but, like, making her a, a DJ in particular, this kind of interesting librarian of, of sounds and experiences –

Sarah: Yes!

Nikki: – fulfill a great translation of, like, why, why a person like this would be well-suited for that.

Sarah: Absolutely, and she’s going up against housing development.

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: And so much of what is going on in American culture can be traced to or is deeply rooted in housing and where we live and how we are placed in the places where we live.

Nikki: Yes. Yes! I, I, this, this is something that’s been kind of dear to my heart. I used to, to work in civic tech a lot –

Sarah: Oh!

Nikki: – and housing was, was a huge issue; it’s a huge phenomenon. And the problem of housing, particularly in DC, and when I, when I thought about the, a problem that could be not easily resolved, I thought of this, right.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: I thought of gentrification, right, because it’s a complex enough issue that someone coming in and revitalizing a neighborhood can genuinely feel like they’re doing good for a community –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Nikki: – like broken windows and no sidewalks –

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: – right, so there’s, there’s a real way that someone can genuinely not feel like they’re a bad person, right?

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: And, and I wanted to toy with that, about where, where he felt like his morals lie in this space and where Liza felt like her, her lines were –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – and took with them at the end, I think I came up with a, you know, with a, with a good enough solution at the end where they kind of both got a little bit of what they needed?

Sarah: Yep!

Nikki: But, I mean, we’ll see. We’ll see if everyone hates it. [Laughs]

Sarah: I think so.

So why do you think, look, sort of pulling back and looking at Austen, why do you think her books remain so timeless and so relevant? There are not a lot of authors who can claim relevancy for that long.

Nikki: Oh gosh. This is a beautiful question. I think about this so often, because –

Sarah: Like, why am I still reading this? Why does this still work on me?

Nikki: Why, why does my heart flutter again and again?

Sarah: Yes!

Nikki: I think it’s rich. I think it’s incredibly rich. That’s just one just giveaway is I can read it like, I, I can read it again and say, ah! You know what, I never recognized, I never remembered that one section or that one part. So, like, it’s incredibly rich. I also think that women in particular have not allowed Jane Austen to – [laughs] – to, like, wither or, like, to die down. So, you know, like the cycles of, like, classic literature –

Sarah: Right.

Nikki: – in particular, oftentimes classic literature can be very masculinist, right, and it can be, like, wrapped up in, this is what it means to tell a sentence and, like, Ernest Hemingway, I think, like, famously didn’t like Jane Austen, right. He just, like, hated her because of, of the, the trifling subject matter, right? And so, like, this particular way of seeing the world, right? If you can think about her economic stances, you can think about her political stances, and you can think about the way that she talks about marriage in a way that is very clear-eyed and a little less romantic.

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: Like, Jane Austen’s stories are these, like, tiny little scenes of life in this particular time –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – and people will try to dismiss them. A, a lot of literature folks have tried to, like, say, hey, you know, this is, this isn’t this, or this is classic but not classic for these reasons, etc., etc., but she endures because the stories that she’s telling, the stories, not necessarily about the people, right, but the stories that she is telling is about, like, how does a woman receive or create, like, value for herself in this society?

Sarah: Right.

Nikki: Right? How does a woman become sane, right? And, and that’s the, the question that I feel like I take from a lot of Jane Austen novels is oftentimes that it’s through marriage, but it is the one time in this, in, in, in the time period where she is able to actually access some agency. And how does she use that tiny bit of agency to become seen and become the person that she wants to be? I mean, come on! That’s, that’s –

Sarah: That’s very rich text right there.

Nikki: Yeah, yeah! That, that’s hero’s epic, that’s Gilgamesh stuff!

Sarah: Absolutely! And being a DJ, Liza has agency!

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: She is creating her own voice out of other people’s voices.

Nikki: Yeah. Yeah!

Sarah: And like we were talking about before, what Jane Austen writes about keeps happening!

Nikki: Keeps happening. Over and –

Sarah: We still have questions about women’s economic stability, whether it’s access to abortion and healthcare, whether it’s access to housing, whether it’s access to fair employment where it’s access to a working environment where you aren’t dealing with bullshit microagressions all the time.

Nikki: Aw, come on.

Sarah: Yeah!

Nikki: You, you, you know that! Gosh! That’s, that’s precisely it, and there’s still instances – not instances; I mean, it’s still very real – where women and girls are told to go to college, right, and get their MRS, right?

Sarah: Oh yeah, I went to a women’s college in South Carolina; I know all about that.

Nikki: Oh, okay! I’m from Texas. Okay, so we’re talking –

Sarah: Yes, ma’am! I hear you loud and clear!

Nikki: [Laughs] Okay! We’re talking to each other then.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Nikki: So, like, so yeah, so that’s, that’s not really that far away. Like, we’re not in, like, the, the, the swinging 2022s that people tend to think we are.

Sarah: Nope.

Nikki: Most expectations about how one receives and creates value for herself are still sometimes wrapped up in the marriage plot.

Sarah: Oh yeah. You mentioned that you’re working on your second novel. Can you talk about it at all?

Nikki: I can.

Sarah: Oh good! I’m glad! [Laughs]

Nikki: Okay. And because it’s a little snippet in the back of the book, okay.

Sarah: I have a review copy, so I don’t have a snippet.

Nikki: Ohhh!

Sarah: I have no snippet, so tell me all the snippets!

Nikki: Okay, okay. My next book is a Sense and Sensibility retelling. It’s called Sex, Lies, and Sensibility.

Sarah: Yes!

Nikki: [Laughs] Yes, yes. It is about a sister, Nora, who has a very private tape of hers leaked, and –

Sarah: Oh no!

Nikki: – for those reasons creates a demeanor about herself that is very counter to her very kind of wild sister. They find out at their father’s funeral that they were the outside children, not the inside children, and all the money that they were enjoying as a result of that just – [slurps] – dries up. And –

Sarah: Ooh!

Nikki: – that’s a – there is a place, and it’s in the backwaters of Maine, and they have to be, like, you know, the fourth Black people in Maine, so they’re – [laughs] – so that is their, that is their journey. They have to go there and rehab a, an inn there with very different sensibilities.

Sarah: And when you do something like rehabbing an inn, you’re engaging with concepts of home and hearth –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – and welcome and safety.

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: Which is, are also major themes in Sense and Sensibility.

Nikki: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Sarah: Little bit.

Nikki: Like – [laughs] – huge. I’m trying to, like, touch on also these, like, these broad issues of how these people kind of express themselves. Sense and Sensibility is essentially about two sisters who both immediately fall in love, right?

Sarah: Yep!

Nikki: Except one is an asshole about it –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Nikki: – and the other person pretends like it didn’t happen. [Laughs] That’s, like, that’s, like, that’s –

Sarah: Feelings! I do not have those; what are you talking about?

Nikki: Yeah! What do you mean, you know? And the other one’s just emo about it, and so, like, that, like, the, the same thing happens to them, right, but it, they’re experiencing this so differently, and that’s –

Sarah: Yes.

Nikki: – beauty of that story.

Sarah: So I always ask this question: what books are you reading that you want to tell people about?

Nikki: Oh my gosh, I want to scream about The Weight of Blood? This is, I think, I think – I’m so sorry that I’m forgetting her name, but it’s a Carrie retelling of, it’s a Black Carrie retelling, and it –

Sarah: Oh, hello! By Tiffany D. Jackson.

Nikki: Yes. Oh! Tiffany, oh yes! Tiffany Jackson. It has my entire heart. It is so good. It’s very dark. I mean, you know, that’s –

Sarah: Little bit.

Nikki: Yeah. Little bit, little bit dark. I am constantly reading Don’t Get Too Comfortable, David Rakoff. I, I, I read them really on a loop. I love his, like, his voice and his tone. I’m, I’m a real fan of, like, essayists and humorists? So David Sedaris, David Rakoff, Augusten Burroughs: I love them. I can just read them forever. Samantha Irby as well.

Sarah: Oh gosh!

Nikki: Yeah. Yeah. Just so funny. Right? [Laughs] So I’ve been screaming about that. I’ve also been watching Love Is Blind, which I –

Sarah: Oh-ho! That’s a very rich anthropological text, ma’am!

Nikki: Let me tell you! Let me tell you! It’s deep, because I’ve been watching this reunion, and I feel like I have so many, I have so many hot takes. Like it’s, it’s insane what’s happening on these shows. Like, I just feel like there needs to be like an anthropology of reality TV. Like, some –

Sarah: Oh my gosh. You’re so right.

Nikki: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: So there is a wonderful podcast called Maintenance Phase, which is about –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – decoding anti-fat bias? So it’s Michael Hobbes from –

Nikki: Oh yes!

Sarah: – You’re Wrong About and Aubrey Gordon, who writes online as Your Fat Friend, and they talk about diet culture; they talk about weight loss fads; the fact that, you know, calories in/calories out is utter garbage; the BMI is based in, like, deep racism from the ‘30s; like, all of those things we’re going to – and I love podcasts that do the work of, you know, reframing. So I joined their Patreon, ‘cause like, you know, you’ve got to support your creators.

Nikki: Yes.

Sarah: One of their earliest Patreon episodes was Aubrey telling Michael about why she loves The Bachelor. And I, I have a very low threshold for the cringe of other people on TV.

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: I cannot get through it very easily, like – so I used to host a podcast for iHeart Radio called Lovestruck Daily with Alisha Rai, and she was like, I need you to watch Love Is Blind, season two, so we can talk about it.

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: And I barely made it through. I thought, I, I had, like, I had, like the best abs of my life from all of the cringe –

Nikki: [Laughs]

Sarah: – that I went through, and I watched it on 1.5 speed, ‘cause I couldn’t handle these people speaking at normal speed. Like, I can’t take it! This is horrible. So I have a very low threshold for secondhand –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: Oh gosh, it’s so horrible. But Aubrey was telling Michael that, you know, she’s, she’s a community activist; she has spent her career doing community organizing in the, on the, in the Pacific Northwest, and is an anti-fat-bias activist. Like, she’s very, very well informed in structures of society, and I’m like, please explain to me – and to Michael, but also I will listen – why you’re into The Bachelor! And basically, she was like, we are watching women realize that they do not have to tolerate trash men.

Nikki: Mm!

Sarah: And one of the narratives that happens in reality shows about dating is that you watch women come into the realization in a very, very, very narrow heteronormative space –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – hang on; I don’t got to put up with this fuckboy. This guy can please fuck off of here like right now.

Nikki: Ah.

Sarah: And I was like, oh, okay! I get it! I get it now! Thank you for explaining this to me. And Love Is Blind, this season is exactly the same! How many harmful narratives are going to be undone by watching women go, yeah, no? Mm-mm, no.

Nikki: No.

Sarah: We’re not doing this.

Nikki: Mm-mm. And then talking amongst ourselves about toxicity and about, like, did you see the one thing that this person did? Is he, are they okay? Is that – this sounds like a sign of this. And so, like –

Sarah: Yeah!

Nikki: – like talking about what is right or wrong in these relationships, and it’s just, I’m just, I, I love it. There’s just something happening there with that –

Sarah: And I –

Nikki: – particularly in season three.

Sarah: And I think that happens with Austen, too. Because when, when Jane Austen is writing characters who treat each other poorly, it’s almost like you’re watching someone next to you. It’s not your friend telling you, hey, your partner is trash, and I know that because I have said this to you, you are suddenly going to make big decisions based on my opinion, but if you have your friend sit down and watch a parallel story that mimics what’s happening you’re going to be like, oh wait a minute, that person is trash, and Jane Austen does that a lot too! She tells parallel stories so that one side will realize, oh, hold on! That’s not okay!

Nikki: It’s not okay. That’s absolutely right. She foils the hell out of us. She absolutely does!

Sarah: Yeah, right?

Nikki: I mean, if you could think about, like, in Pride and Prejudice, for example, how the Gardiners versus the Bennets?

Sarah: Yes.

Nikki: Like, the Bennets’ relationship is trash. Like, they just – [laughs] – you know, like, they’re, like, not in a good marriage, you know? And the Gardiners represent this, like, stable, solid relationship? But also, like, this, this way for, for Elizabeth to enter into, like, established – to say, like, hey, she’s a part of an established and, like, good family.

Sarah: Yeah!

Nikki: Right, she has, she has good relations: here are the Gardiners. You know?

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely, and the Gardiners don’t have any children.

Nikki: That’s right.

Sarah: And so the expectation of the Gardiners is that they will take on the Bennet children as their, as their children, but they really, they really only take on the ones that they want to spend time with. [Laughs]

Nikki: True! That’s true! But then there’s this expectation that the Bennet children also need to be, like, what is it, poor, what is it, poor Kitty, who was like, bless her heart, but at the end of Pride and Prejudice there were just like, and Kitty was, like, able to hang out with, with Elizabeth and not Lydia, and her society was much improved –

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: – and she was just not trash because she wasn’t hanging out, like – the whole idea is like, they need to be, like, extracted from their environment and, like –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – put in their, you know, put in better places –

Sarah: Yep.

Nikki: – you know?

Sarah: And the same thing happens with reality TV too, right?

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: You have these people who are in this – like, for example, with Love Is Blind, you have these people that are in this very specific situation, and the thing that fascinates me about Love Is Blind is that you start off in the pods –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – and then you go on vacation, and then you move in together, and then you plan a wedding. It’s like a very short timeline for some major life events?

Nikki: Really short.

Sarah: But at the same time, you have people who are in a specific situation that then have to go out into society. They have to go on vacation with everybody –

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: – and be in a big group, and then they have to, you know, go to where they live and move in together or whatever, but they –

Nikki: – groups they have to start comparing their relationships.

Sarah: Yes, exactly!

Nikki: – their relationships with respect to the, to other people.

Sarah: Right.

Nikki: And that’s when the real mess actually starts to happen on Love Is Blind.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely!

Nikki: ‘Cause they – making them choose, and they get to see relationships. Yeah.

Sarah: Yep. And they get to see the people that they thought maybe they had a connection with?

Nikki: Yeah.

Sarah: But they didn’t choose them, but wait, maybe they should have chosen them. It is a very, very rich text for an anthropologist, I can imagine.

Nikki: Isn’t it juicy? It’s juicy!

Sarah: It’s very juicy! I mean, I can’t imagine why there’s not an anthropology reality TV conference.

Nikki: Oh my gosh. I wonder if there is.

Sarah: I would listen to every session.

Nikki: As would I.

Sarah: I mean –

Nikki: There’s this one – I’m sorry, I won’t, you know, we’re going too far on reality TV maybe, but –

Sarah: No.

Nikki: – there’s this one –

Sarah: There’s no such thing.

Nikki: – [laughs] – on HBO, and it’s called FBoy Island? And –

Sarah: [Gasps] I’ve heard of it. Have you watched it?

Nikki: I have watched it, and it’s remarkably feminist, and I just have to say that, like, there are these lessons about, like, here’s what consent is, and I think Nikki, the other, a comedian, Nikki – she’s famous.

Sarah: Yeah.

Nikki: She’s famous, a comedian, and she hosts it, and she’s just, like, roasting these dudes. And there are three women, and they are trying to decide which man is the fuckboy and which one is a good guy, and they have to, like, use their own decision-making skills, because the fuckboy can take their money. Or split it with them. You know, so it’s just, it’s a great, that’s a great one.

Sarah: And it’s weird because it, much like, much like Austen and much like romance, you have this incredibly empowering, subversive narrative in, like, the most opulent gingerbread house of patriarchal expectations you’ve ever seen? Like, inside the most opulently decorated gingerbread house of patriarchy, you have subversive feminism.

Nikki: Oh my gosh! I love that! I love that, because, like, you, you crack open this door, and you’re expecting something else, and you’re just like, oh! This is a bite of something juicy!

Sarah: Right?!

Nikki: I thought this was this way! This stepback has this man, you know, like, dominating this woman on the cover.

Sarah: Yep!

Nikki: Oh, but she was, she, you know, she, she made it! She made it happen! Like, you don’t know this –

Sarah: Yep!

Nikki: [Laughs] So yeah. So I –

Sarah: If you look at the covers it’s like, oh, Fabio and his ninety-five-mile-long pectorals are on the cover of this book, but inside is probably a narrative about centering women’s sexual pleasure and, and centering women’s autonomy!

Nikki: Oh, honey. It’s also a story about women choosing. Women –

Sarah: Yes! Absolutely.

Nikki: Yeah! Yeah! Come on.

Sarah: It’s brilliant.

So where can people find you if you wish to be found? It is okay if you don’t wish to be found on the internet; I understand!

Nikki: I wish to be found, because I’m a debut, and I need people to find me.

Sarah: Obviously!

Nikki: [Laughs] Yes! So on Twitter I am @NikkiPayneBooks. On Instagram I’m also @nikkipaynebooks. So Nikki Payne Romance (@nikkipaynewrites) on TikTok. Those are my three main social medias.

Sarah: Awesome!

Nikki: Yeah! And I specialize in very specific Jane Austen memes that, you know – [laughs] – that are funny to me and me only. Right. So –

Sarah: But they’re never going to get old!

Nikki: They’re never going to get old! They’re, they’re never going to get old. There’s people that have this exact sense of humor, and I’m very excited.

Sarah: It’s good to find your people on the internet, right?

Nikki: It is! It is!

Sarah: And Jane is extremely dead? Very, very, very deceased, and yet deeply relevant. [Laughs]

Nikki: Deeply relevant. Dead, but deeply relevant. That’s going to be my next tattoo. [Laughs]

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you so much to Nikki Payne for hanging out with me on her release day. You can find links to locate your own copy of Pride and Protest in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And as always, I end with a terrible joke, and this joke is absolutely dreadful, and it’s from Malaraa, who is in the jokes channel on our patron Discord. Are you ready?

What happens when life gives you pickles instead of lemons?

What happens when life gives you pickles instead of lemons?

You dill with it.

[Laughs] I love a good food joke. Thank you, Malaraa!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a fantastic weekend. If you are traveling, please be safe and mellow, and may everyone be chill alongside you. We will see you back here next week.

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

[Laughs] Dill with it.

[end of groovy music]