There's a moment in the book when the needs of Coco's extended family seem to be eating away at the steps she's trying to take to help herself and her own children. You compare Coco's point of view with that of the nun at the shelter where she is staying: "Coco couldn't ignore the people she cared for, which is why [they] turned to her first for help. The word that came to Sister Christine's mind was enmeshed. Coco would have said she had heart." What do you think? What's the difference for you?
It's a very serious moment, in terms of social policy, where you have a perversion of American ideals about American families. What we're telling Coco is, "If you want to succeed on the terms that we call success, meaning making money, getting ahead, you have to separate from your family." That is an impossible situation for anyone who loves their family.
What a crazy thing to do! To undermine all the connections that are a wealth of resource, comfort, love, joy, frustration -- all those things that families are. So I guess I was trying to say, yes, she does have to make a choice, and it just so happens that she's making the decent one.
Unfortunately it's at her own expense -- and Sister Christine felt the craziness of the moment, too. She said, "Here I am, telling this girl to separate from her family. What kind of advice is that?"
But youth workers often counsel that if your family is leading you to destruction, it's essential to separate. If your father's a drug addict you have to get away from him. If your mother is in a gang you have to get away from her.
Sure, that's true, but it's easy to say when it's not you, it's not your father, or your mother, or your brother. And that's a judgment call, and when faced with people in need, some people don't say no -- and others do. I'm not suggesting that sometimes separation isn't necessary. But the blindness -- again in terms of social policy -- to the vitality of these connections is remarkable.
This is a country that is constantly talking about family values, and is in fact using those "family values" to punish the very people who hold them in a much more day-to-day way than many middle-class and upper-middle-class families do. I mean, Coco had dinner with her family every weekend, even though she doesn't even live in the Bronx any more. And they take care of each other, they baby-sit each other's kids.
Who were your models while you were writing this book?
I don't really feel like I had models, but I was certainly inspired by Susan Sheehan and Alex Kotlowitz. Joseph Mitchell is often a person whose work I turn to again and again. When I would start to feel fatigued or wonder why I was doing this, I would try to read something that would get me back in the saddle again. Poetry -- I would read Adrienne Rich, or Auden, I would bring myself back to the need for the detail. John McPhee. I'd do my best to stay away from similar subject matter. And when I'm writing well -- which is rare -- I don't read much at all.
In his book "American Profiles," journalist Walt Harrington wrote, "If you aren't learning intimate details about your ordinary subjects that you believe are too personal for print, you're probably doing a poor job of reporting. If you don't often struggle with the ethics of what you will include in your profiles of ordinary people, you're either a schmuck or not really facing the ethical dilemmas." Do you also believe this?
Oh, yes. I think I worried about that from the minute I started. At the end of the day you have to make so many judgment calls. I'm glad that I grappled with it so deeply. I don't know if I succeeded, but can say that I really, really, really tried.
The most honorable thing you can do as a journalist is to try and capture everything you see as true. Often, when I would see something incredible, I'd think, "If only I saw this when I was 60, because I bet by then, my writing could hold it." I would think, "Oh, I can't carry what I just saw."
And really, I was just groping along. It's not as if I knew what I was doing out there. I don't want anyone to think that I went in there knowing what the story was, or having a clear focus. Coco was a mystery to me. Coco is still a mystery to me.
Are you going to continue to follow this story, this saga?
I would love to, especially the kids. A while back I went to bring a copy of the book to one woman -- a peripheral person in the book -- and her 8-year-old son kept asking when I was going to write about him. He said, "OK, you've written about it from the grownups' point of view. Now you have to write it as we see it." And I thought, "Wow, that would be amazing."
I mean, wouldn't that be amazing?
About the writer
Sheerly Avni is associate editor for the Life section of Salon.
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