Activist Sandra Fluke & Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone

from wood rubs auditorium at the university of kansas k pr presents women's activist sandra fluke i'm kate mcintyre look rose to national prominence last year after a personal attack from radio personality rush limbaugh based on her congressional testimony about health insurance coverage for birth control later that year she was nominated for time magazine's person of the year look spoke at the university of kansas on march twenty seven two thousand thirteen giving the family tailor and marilyn stark stats women's leadership lecture sponsored by the hall center for the humanities her address was entitled making our voices heard book was introduced by the core nature of the women's leadership lecture barbara ballard as she continues to speak out for social justice across news outlets and addressed the democratic national convention and he was born before she served as a surrogate for the president and his re election campaign and she

helped elect obama doesn't progressive candidates to congress continuing the public that she kind of speaks to audiences across the country in addition to her legislative policy work and pro bono representation of victims of human trafficking she gently lives in los angeles calif with her fiance adam in their jobs and as the pound yeah the president but i think this evening you we hear why we brought it here in front of that is making our voices heard we got a nice voice you'll here will be on death of the evening and speaker center's work it's been

in the past thank you very much for that warm welcome by wanna make one thing perfectly clear as to president was not named after any particular presidents he is a purely nonpartisan canine political figure i actually think he got his name because my fiance visa comedienne and would be much funnier than i'm going to beat tonight i'm sorry to disappoint my fiance really wanted to say things like don't pierre mr eisenstein right so with all due respect it to everyone who's ever born the honorable tale that's the truth about the dog in the name thank you so much for the fabulous and end very kind introduction barbara and i want to say thank you to picture him that the center of the whole center staff for bringing us all together tonight i am very much looking forward to the conversation that we're going to have especially the part where i get to hear from all of you and you get to

hear less from me that's my favorite part is getting to the question and answer so that it can be more of a conversation but i'm actually really honored to be able to speak at a lecture name for emily taylor and from maryland stocks dad i had the privilege of having dinner with a few of their friends and colleagues earlier tonight and hearing personally about the type of leadership that they haven't said that yet in that maryland continues to exhibit an ad as far as for anna lee from his tailor and actually the daughter of a pasture so i know many many jokes about heaven and it's about there being different sections of heaven and whether or not we know who else is they're and i look forward to spending my life as a dedicated advocate trying to get into family section of i think we get along well there and i'm sure we could create some trouble as well in him

thinking about the earth about women's leadership which is what were tasked with thoughtfully talking about this evening i'm often asked about young women and whether or not we are picking up the mantle of leadership and frequently asked this by women who are a little bit older than i am who are very concerned that the millennial generation i'm told that's what we're supposed to call ourselves the millennial generation isn't picking up the baton of leadership for women especially in an activist in the women's rights community and i'll not assure everyone that we're here and we are picking up that baton of leadership it's just that our leadership looks a little bit different and one of the ways that it looks different is that we're striving to make sure that the concerns of the women's movement today reflected the needs of all women including women of color and immigrant women that part of that and then talk about tonight is actually and i have to warn

you because i'm an advocate every speech that i give is ultimately about what i want all of you to do how i want all of you to make your voices heard and so i always try to talk about that's a current issue the current fight and so this is going to be about how women's leadership needs to be exhibited on immigration reform and how we need to make sure that this round of immigration reform benefits immigrant women and families because like nearly every government policy there are concerns within immigration reform that are unique to women so intersection audi looking at how race and immigration status another identity is intersect with gender and that being a woman it's one of the hallmarks of the leadership of this generation of women but it's also that we use a different set of organizing strategies and one of those is that we're little bit more virtual and online oriented my parents discussing with someone recently that were less likely to have a march

wanted to march down this industry and perhaps we were a few generations ago but in fact this march is the march for immigrant women's rights to get that on the march during marriage i can't take credit for it but it's very clever so this month we are virtually a marching for immigrant women's rights all month long and so at some point in the lecture hall just ask you all to move your feet and then it'll feel much more likely we actually marched right so some of you might be thinking immigration as a women's issue and that was not what i expected to hear about tonight i don't see how that that fits and so we start by addressing why immigration is a women's issue and part of that is about the history of immigration in this country for the first one hundred and fifty years of our nation's history women found no independent pathway to citizenship they had to gain their nationality and their citizenship from a husband or a

brother or a father and in fact until the nineteen thirties mothers could not pass on their citizenship to their children because they had non of their own it was by virtue of their relation to an outlet and in the early nineteen hundreds a woman who was an american citizen could actually lose her citizenship by marrying a man who was not who was a citizen of another country and this is this is where it gets really interesting there was an assumption that even though many women worked during this time outside the home and in other types of an employment that no woman could possibly economically support herself so the woman attempted to enter the united states on her own without male relatives in with an affidavit of support she must be a prostitute because that would be the only way she could possibly conceive of supporting herself now hopefully all of those antiquated idea as we've moved beyond this makes clear that immigration

always has been a particular issue for women that affects women differently than a dozen men in general immigration has also women's issue because of the numbers right now women make up more than half of all immigrants living in the united states more than half more than their fifty percent of the population because there are more than five million undocumented immigrant women in the us and that number is only growing because women are integrating into the us at a higher rate than men but women are also the parts of the immigrant community that are applying for citizenship and bringing their families along in the integration process in becoming full fledge parts of our american communities now it occurred to one or two of you that i'm not an immigrant but i'm talking on this on this topic and that's because i think it's incumbent upon all of us in the women's rights movement and all social justice movements to be an ally to each other and to not just speak

up and be a leader of our own community but to be a leader for other communities and to stand together on these fights so my sisters fight like immigrants sisters fight must be my flight as well that said i'm not afraid of that fight my immigrant sister knows what's best for her community in a way that i can't fully understand as well as she can so for that reason i look to the to a coalition of other immigrants who've been stated that the principles that they think should be included in immigration reform for women and this is the national coalition for immigrant women's rights so i know you're thinking she's she's just too lazy to write her own speech that that's why she's relying on this group's principles two to form the structure of what you talk about it's not true and while i am occasionally lazy we are occasionally i firmly believed that immigrant women's voices have to be

at the front of this and i can be their ally but they have to be the leading voices so i do encourage all of you to check out and see it and you are the wordpress dot com that's another hallmark of the millennial generation is that we talk about the web addresses and hashtags during her speeches the hash tag by the way is the number for immigrant women thank you so the principles of that are laid out by the national coalition for immigrant women's rights our first based on family unity and a bit of background for this principle right now we have two immigration pathways in united states through the system based on employment essentially of an employer bringing someone into the us because they need a particular type of worker and then we have a family based system the ability to come here because you already have family members who are legally within the united states women are disproportionately

within the family based system and that has a certain consequences for one thing that means that that women are more subject to the backlogs because the family based system is terribly back brought it can take over twenty years depending on the country that you're from for you to be able to bring a family member to join you know i gave that talk about a similar topic recently and a young woman came up to me after afterwards and said that she came here with her father when she was three from the dominican republic and her mother has been in the dominican republic we doing to combat entire time she's in college so think for a moment about being separated from your mother for twenty years that's the reality for many immigrant communities and the reality for many women another consequence of the fact that women are in the family is

dead frequently they're a dependent of a male visa holder in the employment system so male partner gets that the cell from an employer and then the female spouse is able to to join give a family system but that dependent female spouses prohibited from working in the united states which means that female spouse is dependent on that relationship talk a little bit later tonight about the consequences of the type of dependency in relationships i'm sure some of you can imagine what they are because we've been talking about the consequences of women's dependency and relationships for decades another consequence of the another reason actually for the difference in the two systems and why women are disproportionately in the family system is that it employment base and the system is designed for men it's based around sectors of employment that are disproportionately filled by male employees in fact the differences four to

one for every employment based visas that's given to a woman four were given to a man and the numbers are between the family based system in the employment based system is actually a nine percent difference with a large difference between which system men and women not end up in another concern around family unity is for same sex families to women in a couple some of you may have caught that something's happening with same sex marriage turned on your tv or any other electronic device this week i was listening to the story of an individual who is in a same sex relationship and was unable to you to bring a partner to join because the interaction of the family based system and of the defense of marriage act is that the federal government is unable to recognize a same sex relationship for the purpose of

families says this means that many same sex women lesbian women are unable to have their partners be unified with them so all this comes together with a need to focus on family unity when we reform the immigration system this spring immigration reform must protect the right of all families to stay together regardless of immigration status family structure sexual orientation gender identity or marital status and must provide sufficient family based channels for migration in the future the next principle that we need to address immigration reform this spring is that we need a pathway to citizenship and integration into are called turn into all of our communities that is open affordable safe accessible i realize that the idea that we need to have a pathway to citizenship for undocumented individuals in our communities may be controversial

for some so before thinking about how this impacts women specifically edison put out at a general idea about why this is so important and these are not the typical arguments the might hear a staunch human rights and on caring compassion for those who are already members of our communities this is about money legalizing undocumented workers would raise the us gross domestic product by a trillion and a half dollars over a day thank yes but immigrants do pay taxes contrary to popular myth if the two thousand seven immigration reform had passed and the twelve million undocumented immigrants had been legalized it would've generated forty eight billion dollars in new federal revenue between two thousand eight and two thousand and seventeen we'd be having a very different conversation about debt

and the sequester the budget and in fact immigration reform a pathway to citizenship helps to create jobs by forming new businesses formed by legalized immigrants who also buy homes spend incomes contribute their labor to businesses and you can do all of that they're doing all of that now but you can do all of that more successfully if they're able to do it legally immigrants also fulfill a labor shortage that helps propel our economy forward encounters the negative demographic changes that the us is seeing negative demographic changes as code for the fact that we have a particular generation that's very large and getting a little bit older but we like to coax that in terms like negative demographic changes so that no one feels that because many undocumented immigrants are younger and are entering the workforce rather than starting to exit the workforce as a positive force for our economy by contrast deporting undocumented

immigrants would cost her country over two hundred billion dollars if we were to try to deport everyone and worst us economy would then suffer an estimated lost two point six trillion dollars you can whistle again and that's just over a decade it instead the current system allows employers to continue to exploit undocumented workers which drags down wages and labor protections not only for immigrants within our communities but for all of us and eight allowing the emphasis on border security results in skyrocketing costs but have not effectively prevented immigration across the borders so we need a pathway to citizenship and integration is open affordable safe and accessible but we need that pathway to work for women as well because right now that pathway is the one that's being debated is too focused on the employment system that we talked about a

non traditional male employment specifically it has to work for all women and that includes women who work in the home i spent a lot of time talking about how much we value the work of mothers of caring for families of caring for children caring for elderly relatives and how we value that work at home but we don't put a value on it within our immigration system that can't be part of the work it's valued by that part of the immigration system we have to work on them undocumented women and immigrant women also disproportionately work in the informal sector that's largely about domestic workers say not within ones own home but caring for other people's children other people's grandparents and someone who need assistance in their home that had been informal work isn't recognized in the same way and that means that women are disproportionately left out of that pathway to citizenship that something that we have to change will serve to think about violence despite thinking the ship all over the

map she said she was going to talk about women's leadership and with immigrant women's rights and now to talk about violence against women it's you know because that all intersect is there are high rates of violence in immigrant communities and immigration reform can be part of addressing that immigrant women must be free of mental physical emotional violence at the hands of traffickers and smugglers intimate partners family members and others' hoops blight their legal and economic vulnerability we know but this the flow of immigrants in this country has not been stand by the illegality what has actually happened is that women have been forced to turn to dangerous exploitative systems in order to enter the country because we have a twenty year backlog because we have employment pieces that don't apply to women in the same numbers women are more likely to be at the hands of smugglers very dangerous way to enter the country or to be

taken in by human trafficking schemes and worked with many human trafficking victims he described to me that they responded to newspaper ads for employment in the united states that sounded like legitimate jobs only to be brought into the us told to hand over their documents and then tracks in what is effectively modern day slavery for some some i spoke to have had been locked in basements unable to leave homs for years at a time others because they were from a community and a country with a very dangerous police force in a expletive government had been brought in by threats that if you tell anyone that i'm forcing you to work or that i'm not paying enough then you'll be you'll be sent to prison and that that's where they break people and kill people and those types of threats resonate if you're from a country where that really does happen so by not providing adequate pathways to immigration we've made it much more likely

that women would turn to these dangerous expletive options to enter the country once they're already here that violence unfortunately does not subside we now that compare to the general us population the domestic violence rates for a foreign born woman for an immigrant woman married to us citizen or three times higher that's not because those women had done anything to deserve that abuse that because there are barriers to them all leaving those relationships we know there are barriers to any partner leaving an abusive relationship but it's far different when your abusive partners says to you if you try to leave i will report you i will have you deported i will keep your children were us citizens but you will be gone that makes your choices about whether to withstand that violence or try and try to stay and

protect your children from a violent home a very different set of options and in fact it's difficult for many undocumented women to think about how they would report that violence we encourage woman who's in an abusive relationship to call the police that's your immediate answer right you know what would you call the police if you thought the police were going to deport you we think about it for a moment if you were in that position such a hard set of circumstances of choices and the reality is that many undocumented women make the choice not to because they're afraid of that that deportation and that's why we have higher rates of violence for undocumented women now there were some attempts to address this because part of this and the reasons is happening is also about a nineteen eighty six law that requires that an immigrant spouse be married to us

citizen for a certain number of years before they can qualify for status and for that memory justice threatened to survive about the violence a few more years to literally survive the violence then it will be safe for me to try to leave the one of the attempts to address this this fear this dependency and this inability to reach out to the police was that many cities began to call themselves sanctuary cities and create policies saying that if if you call the police because you need help we will not turn you over to the federal immigration authorities we want you to get help because we don't want to be pockets of violence within our cities we don't want anyone to be suffering violence within our communities seems like a good policy run the federal government had a slightly different it was usually happens with the policies that the federal government's option in

the most recent round of immigration reform was to prohibit cities from following that kind of policy and not turning over that information to the federal government systems to some cities including los angeles my city instead adopted a policy that essentially equivalent to don't ask don't tell that we won't ask you what your immigration status is if you call audrey the health and the safety that you need and that way we won't need to turn you over for potential deportations and that's been successful in lowering the rates of violence in those communities unfortunately the federal government had another idf again and that's the secure communities you heard of secure communities weren't it's an effort to turn local law enforcement into federal immigration officials and to essentially draft them into the effort to find undocumented immigrants and potentially deport them and so that again creates this fear of turning to the police

when you're in a situation of domestic violence another actually positive fantastic policy that come out of the federal government because the federal government does good things occasionally olympics there is it b u visa party of the south feel the need to like yes you can use that is for women or other victims of violent crime who are undocumented but go to the police and cooperate with the prosecution of a batter so they eventually testify or answer investigatory questions so that violent criminals within our communities are more likely to be prosecuted that if everyone were mating silent in exchange that usually woman is able to qualify for a reason to stay in the united states and can qualify for a work permit and began to have access to the services that she and their children need kind of a wonderful pilots bring it overcomes the the

barriers for that woman said that she has access to the services and employment and economics to believe that she needs and the rest of us benefit from there being a greater ability of law enforcement to price they prosecute dangerous criminals in our communities because we don't want to live in communities where violence goes unanswered and un prosecuted fortunately there's a cap on your thesis cause you don't want to be too much safety in any given year and matt kaplan you he says is being hit year after year this year during that the debates of the violence against women act some of you may have heard about there being an effort to help immigrant women that was an effort to make sure that there were going to be enough uv says for those who came forward can imagine coming forward to the police because you thought there would be this is a piece of this resource in and saying we're out maybe next year so there's an effort underway as part of immigration reform because i didn't make it into the violence against women act

to make sure that we have enough uv says to cover women this principle that we really have to address is part of immigration reform is making sure that works for women and families is about the services and the support that they need immigration reform must advance all immigrant women's access to public services and economic support including comprehensive health coverage and care and legal and social services to promote equality of opportunity integration and the ability to make decisions regarding reproductive and sexual health and the well being of the family as they come as no surprise to many women are much more likely to lack health insurance in our country that includes not only undocumented women but all immigrant women as a whole that's because we have a private employment based immigrant or insurance system and indeed jobs in that immigrant women have been much less likely to offer comprehensive benefits like health

insurance but the affordable care act fixed everything right now on one of the things that the affordable care act that did not fix wasn't that it left out many undocumented immigrants because they specifically do not qualify for some of the new and expanded coverage options they don't qualify for certain aspects of the new health insurance exchanges or of the tax credits and subsidies to help with affordability of insurance and they're also excluded from the expansion of medicaid this includes immigrants who've lived in in this country for a certain period of time even if they're on the pathway towards citizenship they're still excluded from having access to this type of health insurance coverage we've all heard since two thousand and that at least all of the arguments way the bad thing for us to let individuals and our communities don't have access to healthcare aside from what it does to public health the impact that it has when they turn to the emergency room because inevitably health crises happen the economic

impact of that that's no less true for the immigrants in her community that is for any other member of our community so we have to address of everyone having access to that type of health care and sometimes we hear the argument that will be don't pay into the system so they shouldn't be able to get benefits from the system but in fact immigrants do pay taxes they contribute to the prosperity of our country and in fact between nineteen ninety six and two thousand three eight and fifty billion dollars in federal taxes you can whistle now i'm sure that would be higher if we had a pathway to citizenship and full tax compliance but there is a high rate of taxes being paid and they were in fact be contributing as they do contribute now seventy eight billion dollars in social security funds every year without it the good news is that the kaiser family foundation

recently found that about two thirds of the country is supportive of us addressing the health care concerns and healthcare access the immigration reform unfortunate congress might not be part of that two thirds of the country but there's public support at least lastly we have to take a look at enforcement and how immigrant women are specifically impacted by or broken immigration enforcement system and forced their detention and deportation program as a compromise and the government safety violate their civil human and due process rights and tear families apart must be replay it's a sensible insufficient legal channels for migration that adequately need family and labor needs and i respect our obligations under international law we know that if we look at the detention and deportation system it's broken right now is comprised largely of private detention center operators who don't have the same accountability as the ones run by the government and i'm not saying that the government has a high standard to be anything

but we should be thinking about alternatives like humanitarian release and programs that look more like a parole program the maximum security prison for someone who's done nothing more than enter the country in order to support their family and abide by or laws while we're attempting to do that and at a minimum if we must have detention we need to make sure that while in detention women have access to the health care that they need and they can receive safe and humane treatment that is specific to their health care needs we also have to remember the needs of trans women and detention who are in a uniquely difficult position in terms of how they're housed in the discrimination and violence that they face and attention but by now we have a long list of needs for immigrant women and families hopefully are convinced that that in fact immigration is a women's

issue but you're also probably optimistic that congress is going to address all of this right now your sense that people unfortunately i am hopeful that congress will address many of these points but not if all of us don't make our voices heard fiona make our voices heard back to the turtle collection because the proposals that we've seen at right now have not adequately addressed these values and not adequately looked at how women's interaction with the immigration system is different and is unique and has to be taken into account when designing that system some of you may have heard of the gang of eight the scene the gang of eight you did you notice anything about the gang of eight yeah they're all men a year ago there was

something that happened in congress were all men were brought forward to talk about an issue that affects a lot of women it didn't go well quite put my finger on on what wires but it feels eerily reminiscent of well i'm hopeful that at least some of the members of the gang of eight have good intentions for immigration reform i wish we had a gang that fully represented our immigrant community is perhaps a little more it's b but we do have some champions league champions like senator mazie hirono who's the only immigrant woman in the senate and is leading the way on these types of principles we had numerous champions in the house as well but the proposals we've seen so far have focused too much on the borders and not on keeping people safe but the borders not on addressing things like human

trafficking and addressing the the smuggling and danger that happens at the borders but instead on border enforcement a policy that we know it's expensive that's a bad combination when it comes to government policies they'll also focus on a path to citizenship that is not as accessible and affordable and open tall as it needs to be instead it's focused on a system of getting in line behind everyone else who's already applied do does anyone remember how long the line twenty years ago during the whistler with me on this but a system that asks us to get in line behind a twenty year waiting list it's a system that's probably not going to work very well and while immigration reform proposals are making an attempt to address some of that backlog and that's a significant concern to their to their success their proposals also continue the

restrictions on public benefits that we just talked about so urgently needing to be addressed elements they continue that even for those immigrants were in the process in the path witnesses injured working toward their green card and in terms of the employment based businesses which is always on my right when i speak i don't know why implement its always over here and families all is over here in the employment based system and there's a real focus on agricultural employment and while there is a great need for employment pieces in the agricultural system that's an area where only twenty percent of the work is done by women that's exacerbating the problem of taking pieces to forty male immigration in a way from women's immigration there is goodness there are good policies to address the needs of the dreamers the children who are the young adults who came here as children who are americans in every respect except on paper so that that is

progress and i'm hopeful that will make more progress on this list but again only of all of us speak up while there are eleven million undocumented immigrants and more immigrants are the hole in this country who are impacted by this policy their voices are not strong enough on their own they need the rest of us they need it or we can only accurately describe as us born descendants of immigrants to stand with them to know that our immigrants sisters fight inner immigrant brothers fight is our fight too because together by speaking up and exhibiting leadership for all of us together we can have an impact on what type tape of immigration system we get in the next few months and we all know that immigration reform is not something that's undertaken every this is our generation's chance to get this right to do right by our

sisters and brothers and to do right by our communities by our economy by your entire country i fervently hope that we don't miss our chance to make our voices heard and to do the right thing to make women's history for the next women's history month that was activist sandra for speaking at the university of kansas on march twenty seven two thousand thirteen flow gave the emily taylor and marilyn stark stats women's leadership blacks are sponsored by the hall center for the humanities i'm kate mcintyre you're listening to hey pee our prisons on kansas public radio for the rest of this hour we'll hear from lawrence author laura moriarty her latest book the chaperon is about the life of silent film star louise brooks that chaperone has just been released in

paperback moriarty kicked off a national book for last week starting in always prince's hometown of wichita this interview was originally broadcast on k pr present in june two thousand twelve for those people who aren't that familiar with louise brooks and her story tell us a little bit about her will she was an icon of this i would film generation and if you don't know the name you probably would recognize the face or actually you'd recognize the haircut and she had that sleek black bob with the banks and i am so people who think they don't know who she is a visual picture than the syrian air force and officials and she's a big film star in the twenties an infamous was in kansas she grew up on just one inch or vail and then she was mostly grew up in wichita but when she was fifteen years old i read that she had gone into the den a sundance cool you know it was a modern dance martha graham was there in greece in dallas and he's famous modern answers and she i'm

doing we've got into the school so she had to go there for the summer and her parents hired a shopper didn't hire they asked a woman to go with her and it was just as it was this thirty six year old wichita house what i'd read all the stuff about always about how while she was she was a reverend she was really really smart she wasn't that nice extremely competent self possessed and i did not care at all about the social conventions of her dead inside to cast a chaperone you know that i wasn't crazy you really was wild you know and so i wondered well who was this woman and there's just not that much about her use of a lost to history and i fell on the skin and make her up so i made up a name for her in a minute the history for her and i sent them to new york together and so most of the book follows their summer in new york and i thought it was interesting because if this woman was thirty six and nineteen twenty two and that means she this woman the sap around you know came of age quick to the turn of the century so she would've been wearing a course it's a long dress and she might've march for suffrage and she might've

organize for prohibition you know she would be in very very different woman and so i thought what an interesting generation gap images fifteen years or twenty years a difference and they're they're so completely different of grownups are developers you know he's probably isn't wearing a bra you know that's funny because you don't think so much about generation gaps are happening in other areas right and it must've been she reached that must've been huge because they were being in the girls of lewis's generation they were really pushing out a lot you know like to give you imagine now like i think now when i see young women dressed and what they're selling in a chaperone court looking at least brooks and what they must at that bought the first time and girls are walking out their knees showing it must've seemed pretty vulgar and so you know just and trying to get into her friend of mine and not to make fun of her and so she's run she's wrong because

you know how far you can take this are wondering now how far how far is me showing ago so the book is that in nineteen twenty two to hear how did you go about capturing that era i did a lot of reading and i took field trips and i watched documentary as i drove down the wichita minutes though wichita historical society and i want to weasel neighborhood i went to the train station where police interceptor and really deadly for new york in nineteen twenty two in which it was eating station is still there but its board of it gosh i read everything i could about making twenty two i watched movies set in nineteen twenty two but i realized pretty quickly that he had to be careful because a lot of times hollywood isn't as exact as he wanted to be for example i watched the great gatsby which is set in nineteen twenty two but it shows amish at the center and doing the charleston which was not happening yet in a conflict in fact louise brooks was that first person to dance the charleston in london she brought it to london when she was eighteen years

old the tough calls it was so yeah yeah she was pretty neat and i am but so you had whatever things like that around our island to the train museum in these guys and these old you know like eighty year old guys wearing overalls and indiana's you you think you can trust these guys a play about trains that they were on they were wrong they were all you know they had air conditioning and train the nineteen twenty two and you know and there would be no they didn't learn pretty quickly you had to go to primary sources in and really you know find things out first or second your book you know with the best most reliable sort of discrete website called short beats and if you're a history buff i highly recommend this website sharpies s h o r p y apostrophe s and what this guy does as people send an old photographs you know from the ten twenty thirties forties fifties and when he does is he analyze and he picks them apart and says see the scar that in the background this is this model and see you know the reason that the handles on the side of his that are used at that event about the desolate clothing he does a kitchen appliances he doesn't whip

electric light switches is just it's really interesting if you're into that kind of thing and so i get pretty addicted to that moment a lot of votes from the twenties do you also go back and wants the louise brooks movies i did i did you know you can see one just on youtube you can google images watch him but the tivoli in kansas city showed pandora's box which is her best film and i went in and i saw that up on the big screen the way it's supposed to be seen and it was marvelous so what is it about what we as brics that you wanted to capture in this bike well let's see if she had she was really smart and some way she sort of that tortured beauty you know that we've seen before in maryland an enactment into she was so smart and she was so a defiant and nina she turned her back on hollywood and i want and that that's known to a lot of families berkes that fall worse but naming an unknown get into his acting like is it's not for the reason people think it's the big rumor about her was because he knew this sound came in

she didn't have a good voice and so they got rid of her but that isn't why i can she actually had a grateful she was a really good actor and there's another reason which i get into in the book but she was so companies use my shoes were tv shows was a very nice and this isn't a character that i think i could have truly connected with us that as a protagonist i thought what a great person for my protagonist to bounce off urban core is someone who i think is a real foil to always in so many ways cause quartet beginning isn't very confident and but she's also got a lot of integrity and she's also kind of in a way that always really hasn't and in some ways car is actually more sophisticated than what we use which would probably surprise coretta here because cars are so humble i think these to do a lot for each other because korea is open to learning from always open to learning from chorus that i like the scenes were there together i think they

bounced off of each other alone so i was super interested in the dynamic well in the book it's called the shop around it's really about cora wraparound yeah so much about what we felt of course she obviously plays very a very prominent role right right it's she's very much the secondary character and she is wet he gets the plot in motion and foster and i am very interested in her life in her art because she's an aesthetic character you know just following her autobiography and her biography is that there's a definite art or life and she was a complicated interesting person and then when i wanted to do though is really highlight this imaginary protagonists sort of interacting with her over the years like in the spin the summer as the most important part of the main they kind of keep track of each other throughout their lives this point represents a real departure from some of your other books touch us about how color writing this it's different from writing say the center of everything worked well i'm falling it actually wasn't that different from the center everything because i think even there i mean

when i slide when i get this idea to my current publisher for the chaperone i said i really want write this thing it's not always brooks what a shame she said we've never done historical fiction and how did the senator and she sent it to our own life when that happened i still had to go back and like everything up it's not like i could hear that but it's actually all dated everything here with ray again when the challenger and i had to go back and research all of that in you know i didn't have the internet and when i wrote that book i mean people had a button on their home sooner and so what i did is i ordered back issues of people magazine which is really the time capsule of our society and it was true well you know like what would they be listening to the radio are they be wary of movies with abc inc what's on tv with the commercial you know and all of that and so that really helped with that and it wasn't that different with the chaperone i mean it was harder because i couldn't remember if i couldn't have my memories triggered you know i'm i do what got me here was the president saying at that time you know what was on the radio you know well look the radio was just coming you know i am but it

was it was the similar where you try and match up a character's lives with the larger story of what's happening in society at the same time so i did have some experience that helped me but i just had to love her research you know it's so different in some ways historical writing is that you get to write it as you get all these little details that help you you know feel about page or get your imagination going at the same time amy you know just having a character come in and turn on the light can be a big enough to stop writing and figure out ok these are the switch is a kerosene is that you know what would it be and you have to stop and figure all that stuff out in a way worse europe and temporary novel you when even think about it so is different yes i need to get your mind around the role of women yeah that era which was very different than it is in contemporary society right and that was important to me to make it

come true in that way i teach it to you like i used to allay still doing them in their teacher corps court historical heroines and we read a bunch of historical fiction and i learned after teaching a class on one thing i like an historical fiction is when the person actually seems true to her time period and not like a contemporary person with contemporary values that the reader can easily relate to settle down and everybody else has so backward you know and that i think is just really easy and i don't like it it doesn't feel are also choirs in some ways she does not think the way we think about gender about race she thinks about it the way a woman of her time with ink which doesn't mean she's not capable of growth in thinking things through because she is smart and she is open to new ideas but she is also being as she was born in a tin at six and she grew up a certain way of thinking about people and that's how it's gone so i really wanted her to not be you know the two dozen twelve character stuck in nineteen twenty two and yet i found

her very easy to identify whether i had no trouble putting myself sort of in hershey use in that era wonderful heard that i can relate to core of you know always corps is easier for me to relate to them always although i do think a lot of people read this and relate to the we discuss us or so young people i think i'm gonna fight with her but she she always has this policy that is always brooke society and have a lot of members a lot of people are still pretty crazy about her which it know that i'm meeting them you know that you are yeah because she uses the sky is madonna energy you know i don't feel tough tough and funny and beautiful and but louisa like madonna as m sadly i'm a little bit more self destructive one of the things your books have in common seems to me that you really focus on female relations says there are men in this book they had done that they don't really play that prominent of a role and i'm thinking of back on

the other a box of yours it seems to me like iron through the relationship between women making something that really interests you as a writer yeah i'd editing images in that and you know my milk characters in this book i wanted they all have stories they have these back stories and i tried to make them three dimensional and interesting and they have their own situations going on but you're right the book does highlight especially this relationship with the reason quote and what it means and how it changes them and i think that's important for novels to do because you know like it is something there's this thing going on the internet called the battle tested allison beck polls she wrote fun home and she came up with this way of talking about so many films and hollywood where i am she is she puts every phone to what she calls the battle test which is i believe it's due have two female characters in her acting for just five seconds in a movie about something other than a man like talking

to each other and on she went to every phone that never won an oscar and ninety five percent of them did not pass it's stunning to watch if you can just google that if you do you to battle test we don't see it because you'll have women in movies but they'll be interactive is how they relate to a man because most babies are our and my men and so i don't think shepherd in any way once to bass men you know that's not my goal at all but i just do want to show that you know women have meaningful interactions were amongst ourselves that was really important to me to show as a novelist because if you look at hollywood and i think what else and that those trying to show us is it a lot in our culture will pretend that that doesn't even happen it's not if in the simeon is in the room are being talked about as just an important and having women's literature is a place for a week attacks are seldom going upstream is that has huge impact one day a character of core especially she justin york city and iron and she explores part of her life that has nothing to do

with her husband her marriage and her life back home right she's trying to find something that's really important to her individually and you know it's interesting because when i was her duty after the spooking out major with english so excited about it and she said you know we're talking we're trying to you know look at the film rights because it is cinematic i've got a tie it's going to be kind of tough because it's a period piece and those are more expensive to produce but the big thing is it's a female lead which is tougher to get through to hollywood so that's interesting isn't it that it's just how do you know it's a woman looking into her own path and is separate from her marriage and you know there is romance in the butt because i do think in a lot of male female russia's ships can be sure it's for a woman in a woman's life but it's empty only thing that happens to women is that the only thing that matters to this female character she's got a lot of other things going on laura do you an answer from the booker you'd like to share with us and un maybe give us a little bit of a lead in to that scherrer i'm just read just a quick passage from when they first get on the train and i might give you

this is when they're just leaving wichita on the train they had their own open section corps devil seat facing releases the windows had drawn curtains mean of the same or in velvet as the seats and overhead they each have a small fleetingly they would need bursts until they get to chicago's and the partition separated the sections normally cora like the openness of the day cars but on this particular trip she felt where it before even left the station a man from across the aisle who appeared about cora's age asked if he could help lower their top window the man had not cornered us offered to lower the window of the two elderly women in the section directly behind them and he addressed the we is director gore quickly answered for her telling him she would let him know if and when their window needed lowering her tone was polite but firm and her real message was clear she was the guard at the gate it always was distressed by her sequestering she didn't show it the brightness of her facing both irrepressible in general directed at no one in particular

no matter where she looked at the ceiling at the of the car at the other passengers at her view from the trestle over douglas avenue or gui was obvious and it seemed as private as if she were alone she did not speak to korea but as the gears of the train we meaning collector she smiled her fingers drumming on her lap she tapped her toes when the whistle finally blew in the train lurched forward she tilted her chin opposed horizon exhaled with a sigh it is exciting cora ventured her boys have love train trips when they were small and often when they were older they both insist on sitting by the window watching for puffs of steam and for years it seemed on every journey she'd had to ask the conductor if they could visit the engine is it ever always rewarded her with a dazzling smile before turning back to the class cory breathed in cigarette smoke and the scent of talcum powder dana leigh across the aisle a baby cried in its mother's arms the mother was trying to comfort the child of cruising kisses and when her efforts failed she turned and gave her neighbors an

apologetic work cora caught her eye and smiled goodbye wichita always weighed down a douglas avenue the busy stream of dark arts' disappearing under the trestle wish i could say i'll miss you that i don't think i will her face it captures leave his enthusiasm and her excitement for taking off end and courts as well although that the son's bed this is a trip that she's going to be on her guarded the entire time you know a lot of relief i don't think she realized what she signed up for now this is not your average fifteen year old girl i mean any fifty year old taking your ear i would be nervous of now i were taking a fifteen year old girl to new york but who is brooke says with strip for two year old girl so low again congratulations it's a fabulous book and us forces with it then do you think that laura moriarty author of the chaperone a fictitious account of silent film star i'm always brooks and her first trip to new york city the chaperone has just been released in paperback i'm j mcintyre

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