Ann Friedman - What have I gotten myself into?!

There is a conventional format for telling the world that you have sold a book: Post a screenshot of the Publisher's Marketplace deal announcement, captioned with a cute "Some personal news" or a cheerfully straightforward "I'm writing a book!" I don't think I've ever seen a "Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into?" caption.

Yes, this is my way of saying: I am working on a new book! And holy shit, what have I gotten myself into?

The book is about modern adulthood—and the phases and milestones that define it—at a time in America when so many of us are rejecting, modifying, or unable to access the 20th century trappings of adult life. I'm talking to some experts, but most of it will be based on intimate interviews with more than 100 people about their own experiences of community and family, work and mobility, identity and belonging, growth and change. This book is about the life stages and transitions we all go through, in very different ways and often on very different timelines. It doesn’t have a title yet. Viking Books will publish it in 2024.

I'm not quite sure how to talk about this book yet. The thing is, you sell nonfiction books before they're written. You sell an idea, not a complete draft. In my case, I sold a series of questions about the trajectory of modern adulthood—and not one single answer. I am lucky that my editors (hi, Andrea and Emily!) bought my questions, and I'm excited and intimidated to look for answers in deeply personal conversations with total strangers. 

I've done 25 interviews to date. So far the most surprising thing is how capably everyone seems to hold the inherent contradictions of adult existence: We're all satisfied and disappointed, comfortable and searching, young and old, special and same. I've found something to relate to in the story of every single person, no matter how different they are from me—even the 30something Christian guy with four kids in suburban Texas, even the entrepreneur in her 60s who emigrated from Beijing in the 90s, even the veteran whose life has been defined not by war but by a custody battle, even the woman fresh out of business school who just got her dream job at Wal-Mart corporate. 

I'm still not sure what I've gotten myself into, or what all these interviews are going to add up to. But, like adulthood itself, the process of working on this book is about being in the mucky, murky contradictions and just trying to figure out the next step. If and when clarity arrives, you'll be the first to know.

Jaquira Díaz on the history of Puerto Rico since its seizure by the United States, the prospects for liberation, and how "the future of a free Puerto Rico doesn’t need to be utopian, or easy, to be just."

An absolute banger of an essay by Charlotte Shane on the essential human right to not be pregnant. It's paywalled, but, I gotta say, worth the price of admission. And Rebecca Kelliher on what the US could learn from Ireland's movement for abortion rights.

A dispatch from the queue to see Queen Elizabeth's coffin, by Laurie Penny. "The British are not the only nation on Earth that knows how to queue, but we’re the only ones to make it part of our personal brand. How like us to romanticise a phenomenon that is fundamentally a response to scarcity and privation." 

Elisabet Velasquez on the trauma of people who have experienced housing insecurity and how displacement is its own kind of war zone. 

How The Lord of the Rings "provided a fertile shire for nationalists" in Italy and became a "more palatable alternative to quoting Mussolini’s speeches and spray-painting Swastikas," Jason Horowitz writes. And in the U.S., the origins and casual savagery of the Proud Boys and the influencers propping up Trump's Big Lie.

Terry Nguyen on ways of seeing Lucy Liu: "A desire to be fully subsumed into the myth of her image."

She’s 86. She’s 28. I loved Deborah Netburn's sweet story about the inter-generational wallpaper queens of Los Angeles.

Writing fellow Celia Mattison on how Jordan Peele's Nope "perfectly encapsulates my disappointment with the Biden administration," and on wealth and mobility in on-screen narratives of working-class New England women.

Yumna Al-Arashi's photographs. Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson and Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou in conversation on the history of transphobia and embracing trans life. Date night by Benito Skinner. A new season of Invisibilia all about control, and Killed Stories, a show about magazine features that never saw the light of day.

Devastatingly relatable.

"I have been a paying member of The @annfriedman Weekly since 2016 and still to this day it’s one of my favorite newsletters. This is your reminder to pay creators for their labor, and pay them well. This world is better because of the beauty they create and put into the world." -the kind and brilliant Alison Turkos.