Writing Is My Drink

Coming of age means coming into danger in Melissa Fraterrigo’s The Perils of Girlhood, a haunting and thrilling memoir-in-essays released today from the University of Nebraska Press’ venerable American Lives Series. I’m excited to share with you my interview below with Melissa about the writing of The Perils of Girlhood.

After my friend and I go our separate ways, the conversation lingers, and as I drive home in the dark with the windows down, the air balmy, clouds ruffled like waves, I replay my words. It didn’t matter, which is almost I didn’t matter, a whole other peril.

–The Perils of Girlhood: A Memoir in Essays

Throughout The Perils of Girlhood, a dual consciousness exists–that of the girl becoming a woman and that of a mother to girls on the brink of being women. And Fraterrigo delivers so much about both those experiences that rarely gets articulated. The teenage girl’s sense of being caught in a searchlight and not knowing why; the awkward feeling of being a girl walking into a new room of people, of being a girl climbing out of swimming pool, of being a girl just being herself–or trying to be. Melissa Fraterrigio writes with an acute intuition about where danger resides–the unarticulated desires, the chaos of shifting situations and impossible standards, that queasy feeling of being somehow wrong even when you’re trying to do everything right–even perfectly. Later in the book, the adult narrator watches her daughters across an invisible and yet undeniable divide, knowing she can’t truly help them through perils they now must navigate themselves. The perils of being a girl–she nails them.

Theo Nestor: Hi Melissa! Will you please tell readers a bit about The Perils of Girlhood?

Theo Nestor: What was the biggest challenge in writing these essays and forming this collection and how did you overcome it?

Melissa Fraterrigo: The greatest challenge in writing this book–and this probably stands for all writing projects–was getting out of my own way. I began writing the book during the pandemic. My daughters were in school and all my classes were online. I am a fiction writer by trade, but found that fiction could not hold my attention. I would literally read the same paragraph over and over again, unable to create a relationship with the words on the page. At the same time, I was thinking a lot about my childhood and adolescence. My girls were on the cusp of becoming teenagers, and I couldn’t help but think about all that was on the horizon. So much of what I’d experienced at my daughters’ ages had influenced my mothering from my dad’s sharp temper to the unwanted sexual advances I’d experienced at the hands of dates. As my daughters crept toward the age when so many crucial events happened to me, I wondered how to keep them safe and how to mother lovingly despite my anxieties. With fiction, you stand behind your characters. In memoir, it’s all right there, and I had to be brave. I had to believe my story was not only worthwhile, but that others might deem it beneficial.

Theo Nestor: What was something that surprised or delighted you in the process of writing these essays?

Melissa Fraterrigo:I simply had a blast putting the book together. I think any time you can find joy in the process of creation, that is conveyed to the reader as well. The book is mainly chronological, but it was not written in linear fashion. To highlight universality, I created a series of ten or so “pop cultural vignettes” that were anywhere from 100–250-word asides that were deep dives into everything from “Little House on the Prairie” to Judy Blume and “The Facts of Life” TV show. These were highly researched pieces that I used as an opening to a longer essay or two and then the essay also concluded with one of these vignettes. Yet such shorter pieces interrupted the narrative, and I ended up folding them into the longer essays. As I dug deeper into each essay and listened to what I was trying to say, I could focus on how best to get such ideas across, and it was such a joy to use such excavation to fine the best structure for this book. Endings were transported. Middles became beginnings. It was terribly exciting.

Theo Nestor: What advice would you give to those working on an essay collection with the hope of publishing?

Melissa Fraterrigo:Figure out your process. There are lots of ways to write a memoir, but you’ve got to find your own approach. I encourage my students to keep process journals where they contemplate the writing process both before, during and after drafting so that they can be in better touch with their own creative process. And please, please, please, give yourself grace. You don’t have to write every day. You don’t! But you can work on your project when you are walking the dog or making your morning coffee. Think about your work as you do these tasks. When your writing sees that you take the creative process seriously, it is more likely to continue to flood your mind with ideas and inspiration and ways to keep moving forward. 

Theo Nestor: Where can readers connect with you online?

Melissa Fraterrigo:I have a Substack–Between the Lines–where I share stories of the everyday to explore new ways of thinking, seeing, and writing in our world. I usually share a brief essay and offer a prompt for writers to pen their own essays. 

If writers purchase my book before 9/3 and share a copy of their receipt with me, they can join me for a FREE Memoir-Writing Workshop that meets at 6:30 p.m. EST on 9/3. I’ll include the link here for more information. I also run a small writing studio, the Lafayette Writers’ Studio, where we offer classes on the art and craft of writing in an intimate and supportive environment. Learn more about all of this at melissafraterrigo.com

Melissa Fraterrigo’s memoir, The Perils of Girlhood (University of Nebraska Press), is now available at booksellers everywhere. Fraterrigo is also the author of the novel Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press), and the story collection The Longest Pregnancy (Livingston Press). She teaches creative writing at Purdue University, in the Butler University MFA in Creative Writing program, and is the founder of the Lafayette Writers’ Studio in Lafayette, Indiana. Please visit melissafraterrigo.com