Molly Jong-Fast on 'How to Lose Your Mother'
57:47 Share

Hey, Forum listeners, it's Alexis. Did you hear that Forum is launching a video podcast? It is true. Each week, we'll drop a video recording of a recent Forum episode on the KQED News YouTube channel. We can't wait to bring you into the studio for our conversations on Bay Area culture, California news, and beyond.

Our first few episodes are out now. Just visit youtube.com slash kqednews to see it all. That's youtube.com slash kqednews.

Everything is getting more expensive. Rent, groceries, insurance. And because California's excessive ride share insurance laws attract litigation abused by billboard lawyers, costs are going up for everyone. Bogus claims and inflated settlements drive up state required insurance costs, which make up nearly a third of your Uber ride fare. Join our fight to protect your access to affordable rides. Go to uber.com forward slash fare dash insurance to learn more.

From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, this is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. 2023 was a terrible year for Molly Jong Fast, the political commentator who appears regularly on MSNBC and hosts the podcast Fast Politics. Her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she had to put her mother, the feminist writer Erica Jong, diagnosed with dementia, into assisted living.

In her memoir, How to Lose Your Mother, Jong Fast reflects on her complicated and at times chaotic relationship with her mom, who struggled with the fleeting nature of fame and with alcohol addiction. We'll also get Jong Fast's take on this weekend's major political developments. Join us.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. You may know Molly Jong-Fast for her political analysis and sharp critiques of the president and his administration on MSNBC, or in her Vanity Fair columns, or her podcast, Fast Politics. But Jong-Fast's new book is not about politics. It's about her mother, Erika Jong, the writer famous for her 1973 novel, Fear of Flying, which was hailed as a groundbreaking feminist work.

That fame meant Jong-Fast struggled to get the love and attention she longed for from her alcoholic mother, who was often more focused on maintaining her fame than on her daughter. Her memoir is called How to Lose Your Mother. And Molly Jong-Fast joins me now. Welcome to Forum, Molly. Thank you for having me, Mina. So even though your new book is...

Not about politics. I do want to ask you about politics to start. Just given everything that happened over the weekend, President Trump's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, as someone who has followed this president's actions closely for years, he promised to end involvement in foreign wars. What do you what do you make of all this?

You know, it's look, it's really disappointing. I think we are. I think there are a few people on the partisan Democratic side who are who aren't very disappointed by this. But I also think there are some Trumpers who really did believe that when he said he would. I mean, Trump, there was one thing Trump promised again and again as late as his inauguration speech.

that he would be known as a unifier and a peacemaker and a dealmaker. I mean, at every point, he said, you know, I'm going to make the greatest deals. I don't believe. I mean, so much of his 2016 career

candidacy was that Hillary was somehow more involved in foreign wars and that he would keep the United States out of foreign wars and that the Iran deal was so terrible. And the irony here is that the Iran deal was set up to avoid something like what happened on Saturday.

So then do you think he'll face political consequences? There is a lot of reporting about fishers among his base, commentators, prominent ones like Tucker Carlson and others who are very much against this action. I'm wondering if you think he'll pay a political price. I mean, there have been so many times when we've seen Republicans pay a political price, but not necessarily Trump.

Trump has a very different kind of

He occupies a very different kind of political gravity than much of the Republican Party. So it's very hard to predict what will stick to him and what won't. You'll remember that COVID, which was, many people think, very mishandled. Again, it's a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, so there is no... There are more people you can point to who handled it poorly than handled it well. But even that...

at the time, seemed very mismanaged by him, but he did not face political fallout for it.

Yeah, I guess it will also be a question of the degree and the quote unquote success potentially of any retaliation from Iran. We're seeing reports from CNN, from Israeli sources that Iran fired missiles toward US bases in Qatar and Iraq. I mean, I guess then the question is, what about for things like that for things like not seeking Congress's approval? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, look, Congress has really been so derelict in their responsibilities at every point with this second Trump administration. We saw Republicans who knew better vote to confirm RFK Jr. We now see RFK Jr. firing huge swaths of HHS.

I mean, that seems like it's absolutely going to end in disaster, right? We've seen so much. Congress has just gone along with almost everything. And the tariffs are a great example. There was congressional power to stop the tariffs. They refused to use it. There's this, you know, if Congress ever had power, this is the moment, right? Because Trump's big, beautiful bill, I mean that with all the caveats and, uh,

quotation marks possible. That bill, right, winding its way through the Senate is leverage, right? They actually have leverage. They just refuse to use it, right? These, if a smart Congress would say to Congress,

to Trump, you know, we have this leverage and we need you to, you know, not have ICE arresting people or not go to war with blue cities or, you know, they could have a laundry list of things they'd want from Trump because they have a little bit of power, but they refuse to use it because Mike Johnson is really just sort of serves at the pleasure of Donald Trump and has been installed there to rubber stamp whatever Trump wants.

So then how should Democrats respond to this moment? And are you confident they will in an appropriate or meaningful way that will reflect the Democratic base, I guess?

So what I see from these marches, from the millions of people who are going out into the streets, which is one thing to vote. It's one thing to tweet. It's one thing to give money. It's a whole other thing to go out with your children or your parents on a weekend day. Right. And go out on the on the streets because you're so upset. I mean, that, I think, is a is a real thing. We're seeing, you know,

I'm not entirely sure of the calculations, but there's some... Some people think it's close to 1% of America was on the streets. Those are crazy numbers. So think about that. And this is a base that is furious. And if you talk to them, they tell you they're furious with leadership. Why are they furious with leadership? Because the leadership is not reflecting the rage that is getting them out into the streets. And I think that, honestly...

This is a moment for legislation and a moment for a peaceful pushback that Democratic leadership could enact and just seems to not be able to meet the moment.

What do you think is most important for us to understand about what drives this president? There are so many questions that remain now about what's next, right? He's floated regime change. Is he going to contain this or is he going to just sort of go with whatever? And I think the question that I think you've been really good at putting your finger on are the kinds of things that really drive Trump's decision making, even when it feels really contradictory.

Yeah. So here's what I would say. I think there are a couple of different things

factors. We don't know what's going to happen with Iran. We don't know how much pushback Trump's base... I mean, if you read the... The best reporting about Trump, I think, comes from the New York Times. Those guys are just... You have literally every single one of those Trump reporters are really good. And so they really... If anyone has a handle on what's going on in that White House, it's the New York Times. And...

You know, there's a lot there. And I was unsurprised to read what I read today in The New York Times about how they had really good, very sourced, multiple bylined piece about how Trump was basically watching Fox News, which anyone who was in Trump's first administration, anyone who paid attention then would know that Fox News is often the assignment editor when it comes to Trump. I would just say that.

In my mind, there are larger structural problems that Donald Trump has created.

shine the light on with American democracy, right? Like Congress not taking its job seriously, not using, you know, they should be controlling power of the purse. You should not have Russ Vaught in the office of OMB controlling how congressionally appointed congressional money is spent, right? So there are all these different ways in which Trumpism has shown that the American Congress is not doing what it should be doing.

That said, it's impossible to predict Trump, right? So many of us in pundit world thought that two weeks was the blow off, that two weeks meant he wasn't going to do anything. Yeah. One of the articles I was struck by was when you also wrote a piece for Vanity Fair about, you know, the president's deployment of troops in Los Angeles. And it feels like

And you said that he's projecting panic, not power. But you also talked about how important it always is for him to project power, to project strength. Do you think that's playing a role in this? Yeah. And I also think, I mean, there's been...

Republicans and neocons more specifically have long dreamed of bombing Iran. This is not some new idea. This has been sort of, you know, these guys have long thought that that was, you know, if they could just get in there. It is, by the way, just any time America goes into something like this, unless it ends up being one of those times, and there have been times when

we've gotten out of it and it hasn't bloomed into something bigger. And I hope and pray this isn't another one of those times, but we don't know, right? I mean, now we're in a sort of wait and see mode.

But every time America has gone into the regime change game or even just the, you know, foreign wars game, it's always been really just such a disaster. So it's hard. And it's funny because it's like the one thing that Trump really had broad bipartisan support on was not getting involved in the Middle East.

And and and and for whatever reason, this you can no longer say that Trump will not be involved in the Middle East. So then how should we, you know, as a people, as an electorate that could be entering essentially a war under the leadership of this president? What do you think we need to keep in mind? What do you need? What do you think we need to be really watching for?

So I would say the most important thing is that Democratic electeds, Republican electeds, if there are any who are brave, I'm not sure there are at this point, but Democratic electeds need to be. I mean, one of the things Chris Murphy has done so effectively and so well is narrate what's happening. The problem is it is not a great moment for the mainstream media, right? It's just a much smaller event.

You know, it's a sort of shriveled husk of what it was eight years ago. And there's a number of reasons for that, though. One of them is that Congress failed to ever legislate technology. Right. So technology, you can have all news sites that are completely black.

contain unverified news. And there's no regulation against that, right? You can't put stuff that's not true on, you know, there are regulations for many, many different kinds of media outlets, but the internet now, right? So that is, I think, part of how we got here. But there's just a lot less media and there's a lot less

accurate media. And so it's very hard to know what's really happening. And that is why it falls to Democratic politicians. Molly Jong-Fasmar with her after the break. I'm Mina Kim.

Support for Forum comes from the University of San Francisco School of Management. Celebrating 100 years of partnership with the Bay Area business community, the USF School of Management connects students to the city's vibrant culture, hands-on internships, and a wealth of career opportunities.

where AI and sustainability are integrated into every facet of business education, and where students bring innovation, ethics, and entrepreneurial leadership to a planet in need. The University of San Francisco School of Management. Change the world from here. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment.

They wield the power of the law to protect people's health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, and advance clean energy to combat climate change. Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer. Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking this hour with political writer and commentator Molly Jong Fast, who has written a new book not about politics. It's actually an unsparing memoir about her mother, Erica Jong, who she describes as self-absorbed and constitutionally incapable of being honest and how all of that affected her in her new memoir called How to Lose Your Mother. And

And what do you want to ask or tell Molly? You can email forum at kqed.org, find us on our social channels at KQED Forum, or call us at 866-733-6786. You know, Molly, there were moments when you were describing your mother, and I was just wondering if part of the things that you are able to recognize in President Trump come in part from experiences with your mother? Yeah.

I mean, I definitely know, I definitely have some insight into erratic baby boomers who came of age in Manhattan during the 70s and 80s. You know, I have some, I have some insight into that, I think for sure. You know, there's so, there was so much time being spent in the media diagnosing Trump, you know, but it's,

You know, he's a white male baby boomer who comes from a certain very privileged socioeconomic class, which is not a...

You know, it's not I mean, I also came from a lot of privilege, so I don't I don't. But I just don't think he's so his his problems are so different than a lot of people in that generation. Yeah. Tell us about your mom, who you write about with the love and adoration of a daughter who, you know.

admires what she achieved, right? But also, you know, with the pain of having been neglected, of having experienced her alcoholism, and even at times,

her betrayal in terms of the way that she would write about you. But tell us about the part that you love and adore, the things that really made your mom to you, someone who you describe as a person you burned for first. Let's go there first. Well, you know, I wrote this book because I had a platform, which is this new...

That, you know, I, they probably, you know, there were publishers who came to me who were like, you should write a book. And I wanted to write a book, but I didn't want to write like a disposable book. I didn't want to write a book that wouldn't be relevant in six months. I wanted to write a book that was really, really,

If you're going to buy a book, like $26 is actually quite a lot of money. And I wanted to write a book that people would relate to. And I just didn't see a lot of stuff that was worthy. A lot of stuff that came to me seemed more like a magazine article. But what happened was that when I started working on this book,

I started to when my mom started to get dementia, I started to run into a lot of friends who would be like, oh, my parents are failing. Oh, I'm here visiting my dad. Oh, we put my mom on Medicaid, Medicaid.

Medicare, Medicare to try to like it was so expensive. It was so hard to do. And when I started doing it, I was like, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. And I got sober when I was 19. Like, I know how to do, you know, I can I can do hard things. And, you know, to quote Glennon Doyle. But but I.

But this, I was like, this is really hard. And so I thought, well, this is really worthy of a book. And, you know, I didn't write this book because I'm Erica Jong's daughter and there's so much interesting stuff there because, like, honestly, nobody cares. Like, you know, the world is, I mean, it's not really what I wanted to focus on. I mean, there are certainly parts of it that are interesting if you're an Erica Jong fan or a fan of mine. But really, mostly, it's meant to be the story of what it's like

to have elderly parents who you want to do right by, but you may be mad at for any number of reasons, real and imagined or real. And to have kids that you need to be there for and who are, you know, just, and you have a job too. I mean, just this sort of

craziness of being in that sandwich generation. And I felt that, and what I know now from this book coming out and it's been out for, I'm in my sort of third week of book touring, is that

People really relate to it and felt like people weren't there was not enough writing about the experience that we find ourselves in. Yeah. I mean, you're describing the fact that, yes, you have a job, you have kids. You also at that time had a husband who was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas at a time when, yeah, your mother had all these needs as well through a life where I think it felt like her needs always superseded yours. Yeah.

Yeah. So my I mean, like a third of all Americans will get cancer. These are crazy numbers like that is an insane number. And he we got very lucky because he had neuroendocrine cancer in the pancreas and not pancreatic cancer. So he's in remission and it turned out to be cancer.

It's great, but there was so much uncertainty about what kind of cancer it was and when the surgery would be and what we would see when they did the surgery. There was just so much back and forth. And that uncertainty was extremely hard to deal with. And then also having teenage kids and not knowing how to transmit to them.

That what this meant for them, right? What does this mean? What does this mean? I mean at one of the I try not to write about my kids or talk about them But they were definitely and so I tried to talk about them as a collective But there was a lot of like anxiety, you know, can I stay in in my school? Would this mean what does this mean for me? And

And it was really tricky. And so part of why I wrote this book was because I had gotten sober when I was 19, I saw how my experience could benefit other people. And I thought this is a book where if you have a parent with dementia or a parent where you just can't make peace with this or a spouse that's sick, like you can get a lot of my experience and it's useful.

Yeah. So there's, that's the universal part of it, but there's also the very specific part of it, which is your experience of her being Erica Jong, who, you know, known for writing, uh, the, the book that was considered, you know, like a groundbreaking novel of second wave feminism called fear of flying in 1973, where she's really candid about sex and about a woman who is pursuing it. Um,

and who writes about you and who writes in a way where, what would she say to you? Like when you write, you have to open a vein. Yes. So that, I mean, that's sort of the writerly school. And in some ways, that's why I made,

I tried, I don't want to say I made this book good because that sounds very arrogant, but I, one of the reasons why I took a long time writing this book and why I, you know, got all the, you know, I had a really great, I had a great editor, but I also hired another great editor was because, um,

was because I come from a literary tradition where books really matter, right? I'm the daughter of granddaughter of writers, not so as much as I really enjoy being on television, because I, I find television to be incredibly fun and I love my podcast, but, but I, I,

I feel like a book is everything. So I really wanted it to be a book that you, you know, I have my experience in there, but I also really tried to make it something that was both readable, but also literary. And, you know, I based it on a year of magical thinking. So the idea was that there'll be, that you could have a year. And Didion's such a great writer.

Look, everyone wants to be Joan Didion. That's not that's not a new idea. But she's and I find her politics to be too far to the right for me. But and especially when you read her stuff about the 60s, it's like it feels very, very reactionary, but and very.

involved in class and whatever. But the point of this story is I found her, I find her reporting to be, despite that really beautiful, her prose to be beautiful. And so that was the, you know, I felt like,

Even though you don't necessarily have writers like that so much anymore, that was my, you know, the inspiration for my career has always been that I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be Didion. It's a very high level inspiration. And I'll probably be more like Irma Bombeck. But, you know, Irma Bombeck is great, too.

Well, you do have this line that really stood out to me in your book where you say, my mother was famous and it changed her makeup, changed the makeup of her cells like a smoker who gets lung cancer. How did fame affect your mom?

So, I mean, I never knew her on Famous because she had me in 1978 and the book came out in 1973. But I've seen, but I saw how hard it was for her. And I saw this in my grandfather, Howard Fast, too, that they couldn't get on Famous. And look, I think it depends. I always ask people if, I always ask people who are famous or, you can't really ask famous people. I'll ask their spouses. Right.

if I can, if I know them well enough, I'll say, what were they, you know, how did you keep them normal or what did you do, you know, what happened?

And it tends to be, from what little I've been able to glean, that the people who do the worst are the people who get famous the younger. The younger you get famous, the worse. And then the other thing, which I think was really true for my mom, is that the worst is if you get famous for one thing. It's much better to get famous, like,

on a television show or for writing a series of books or for like the worst kind of thing is that you just sort of do one huge thing and then nothing can be as good as that. And that was my mom's problem. And that I think was very tough for her. How did that play out, especially in her parenting of you? So I don't know that my mom's not great parenting was actually her fault because most

my grandmother was also really a terrible parent. So, and my grandmother was, I think this is a little bit interesting. Maybe not. I can't, the one thing that has that, you know, I'm not so famous, but the one thing that I have completely lost track of from doing all these interviews is what is boring and what is, you know, just sort of good interview fodder. So if I get boring, please tell me because I worry. But,

But my grandmother was friends with the wife of Jackson Pollock, a woman called Lee Krasner. And Lee Krasner became a pretty famous painter in the 50s. And my grandmother could not stand it because she felt that she was a much better painter than Lee Krasner. And so she had this sort of innate...

not innate, but she had a theory that her daughters had derailed her career. And I really believe that she sort of passed that down to my mother and her sisters. And so I think that was one of the big problems that my mom had was this feeling that maybe had my, you know, the children were somehow destructive to your career.

I want to invite listeners into the conversation wondering what parts of Molly Jong-Fa's story about her mother resonate.

with you? Have you or someone you know wrestled with fame or celebrity or losing that fame? Have you struggled with alcohol use or had a family member who did? Do you have unresolved issues with a parent who's experiencing dementia? Tell us by emailing forum at kqed.org. Find us on Blue Sky Facebook, Instagram, or threads at kqedforum. Call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. And Noelle on Discord writes...

It's a hazard being a family member of a novelist. Did Molly Jong Fast read Alice Walker's daughter's memoir? I did not read it, but I love Rebecca Walker. She's really talented. And yes, it is fascinating.

That's absolutely a hazard. I mean, look, the thing that I just want to say about these women is we, I truly believe this about my mother and I certainly believe this about Alice and Rebecca. Rebecca is my age, so it's different. But that generation of women, we owe a huge debt. I feel I owe a huge debt of gratitude, too. I mean, remember, my mother was born in 1942. Women could not have a bank account.

Right. She I mean, she told the story about about dropping out of her doctoral program that sounded a lot like being sexually harassed. So I, you know, I feel like you don't get it.

Any of the women that we are, me or Taffy or Maggie Haberman or any of these women, you know, Kara Swisher, we don't get to be these people unless the Erica Jongs and the Alice Walkers, you know, really do walk through fire to help us move along. And, you know, while we don't have the kind of progress we may want, you

We are further along than we were in, you know, in 1972. Yeah. And...

I think that's the part of that that comes through in this while you are very unsparing, which I think your mother even expressed in like a New York Times interview being proud of whether or not she reads the book or not, or if she has, I think is probably a question for you. But yeah, but that there is this part of you, or maybe it was going through the writing of this process that has been able to, to reconcile or resolve some of the things that

you now, because she has dementia, feel like could be, you know, unreconcilable or irreconcilable. Oh, I'm very... I mean, I...

I don't think I exist without her. I mean, obviously there's the mechanics of being her daughter, but then, and also the nepotism, but then there's just, you know, she, women that like us who have full lives, you know, we are the product of that. And I very much am. So I feel very grateful towards her. And I also feel like,

Like, you know, when you read, I mean, the New York Times piece had some really good writing about this. But, you know, my mom, sometimes when she was, you know, she wrote a lot when she was pregnant with me. And this idea of women who could, and again, having it all is a very loaded phrase, right? But who could have more, right?

in their lives than our mother's generation. Very lucky. So, and especially in a moment now when we see that some of our real, you know, we see people being, you know, we see LGBTQ people under attack. We see trans rights really under attack. We see people of color under attack. And so, you know, I think it's important to

to celebrate what they did for us and to protect everyone who is, you know, to protect all, to try as hard as possible to protect the people who are not, who are not being protected in this moment. And there are a lot. How have you...

Well, what effect did it have on you that she would write about you so much, right? I mean, and even at times minimize your experiences. Like you had the experience of almost dying in childbirth. Yes, that was not good. Yes, I didn't like that. It's funny because I had always been very...

I had always been a little irritated about her writing about me and that I hated that she wrote, you know, I really did almost die in childbirth and she really made it sound like I had had a pedicure gone wrong or something. And it got me very mad. That said, I was interviewed by a woman who had a mother who was a novelist who had used her and her sister as characters in her book. And I, I,

She was so incredibly thought it was hilarious and was sort of not she just didn't she just thought it was funny. And there was something so delightful about being able to just take it as a joke.

and not as this heavy thing that I thought, oh, I would like to be like that and not be bitter. You know, part of it is this book, I'm writing this book at 46 years old. So the question has to be, you're like at least,

25 years into your life at this point. So who are you going to be? Are you going to be someone who just continually complains about things that happened many decades ago? Or are you going to be someone who can, in fact, live in the world as your own creation? Wow. Yes. A lot to think about with Molly Jong Fast. And we'll have more with her and with you listeners after the break. Stay with us. This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Support for Forum comes from the University of San Francisco School of Management. Celebrating 100 years of partnership with the Bay Area business community, the USF School of Management connects students to the city's vibrant culture, hands-on internships, and a wealth of career opportunities.

where AI and sustainability are integrated into every facet of business education, and where students bring innovation, ethics, and entrepreneurial leadership to a planet in need.

The University of San Francisco School of Management. Change the world from here. Greetings, Boomtown. The Xfinity Wi-Fi is booming! Xfinity combines the power of internet and mobile. So we've all got lightning fast speeds at home and on the go. That's where our producers got the idea to mash our radio shows together.

Through June 23rd, new customers can get 400 megabit Xfinity Internet and get one unlimited mobile line included, all for $40 a month for one year. Visit Xfinity.com to learn more. With paperless billing and auto-pay with store bank account, restrictions apply. Xfinity Internet required. Texas fees extra. After one year, rate increases to $110 a month. After two years, regular rate supply. Actual speeds vary.

You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking to Molly Jongfast this hour about her new memoir, How to Lose Your Mother. It explores Jongfast's relationship with her mom writer, Erica Jong, famous for her 1973 novel, Fear of Flying. And Jongfast reflects on her relationship with a mom who sometimes seemed more in love with being famous than being a parent. And she's going to talk to us about how her mom's relationship with her mom, Erica Jong,

And what it's like, especially now as her mom has dementia, which has forced Jong Fast to reconcile her feelings about her mother. Listeners, is this something you relate to as well? If you do, tell us by calling 866-733-6786.

By emailing forum at kqed.org or finding us on our social channels at kqedforum. The sister writes, I am in the sandwich generation, juggling older parents and kids. It feels natural to parent a kid, but so much harder to parent a parent, especially as they face memory issues. I'm watching my parents fade away. I feel lucky that I've been able to resolve issues with both of them. And I credit a friend who told me 10 years ago, the runway ahead of your parents is short. Don't waste time.

Thank you for this book, Molly. Let me go to caller Linda in Walnut Creek. Hi, Linda, you're on. Hey, thanks for taking my call. I'm really excited that I get to ask this question directly as I've been sharing about your book with my friends and asking this very same question. Towards the end of the book, you recognize that your mom had done her best, tried her best in her parenting, and I think

I just was curious about how you came to that, even after all the challenges and neglect that you got from your mom.

But thank you so much. What a good question and an important question. And also I love that I have to tell you what's so exciting about this book is like, I go to book talks when I go to give a talk, everyone's like, you know, they come up to me afterwards and they're like, I have a, this, I have a, that, or, and the worst is when I'm signing books, people come and be like, I'm an only child. And I'll be like, Oh, I know. Cause I'm like, I'm an only child. I'm like, Oh man, I,

at you. But yes, so I'm really delighted. I mean, it just makes me so happy that you asked me this question because it's such a good question too. So I would say I got sober and I had done therapy and I, but I also was, like, it is this idea that you are responsible after a certain point. Also, the other thing is that I did see my child, like, there are people who had really, you know, this was like sort of

you know, it wasn't great, but it wasn't, I mean, there are people who have had really horrendous childhoods with abuse. And, you know, one of the things that we learn in AI is that, you know, if you hold on to resentment, ultimately it affects you more than them. And I felt that there were, and even, you know what, even more than that was recently I've been talking to my kids about

the different ways in which they're like me or they're like their father. And some of the best ways in which they're like me, I can see as directly from my mom.

Do you know what I mean? Like the things that she was interested in, the way that she was very intellectually curious, the way that she was, you know, thought, you know, she, she learned Italian and wrote in Italian. She read, you know, she just was a very interesting person who, who made me ambitious in ways that had I had had another mother, I would not have been. And so she,

all of that doesn't come, it comes with the other stuff. And so I'm grateful for the good stuff. And I also know that myself as a parent, and I'm sure that you can relate to this if you have kids,

This is not none of this is perfect. Right. Like we will do. I mean, I am sure my kids will be in therapy complaining about my being super controlling or telling them who they should date, you know, whatever. And so then none of this is none of us are perfect. Yeah. Well, this this is a question from Jane who writes, I was a parentified child before.

My mother confided in me about all her personal problems. It's made it extraordinarily difficult for me to want to help her now that she's aging. Could your guest comment or offer some strategies? I love this question too, because this really also does get to something that you explore in the book. And I think really was so relatable is when you have these types of unresolved issues. I mean, you do reach a point as Linda was pointing out where you feel a certain understanding and appreciation, but unfortunately,

But in the process of having to be the caregiver and having to accept that your issues will not get resolved in the way that you imagined them to be, it does affect that, right? It does affect your desire to be that person.

A hundred percent. And I would say that with that question, that generation of baby boomers really did feel that they could use their kids at shrinks. I don't think our generation does it as much, but they, for whatever reason, they didn't, you know, they didn't have car seats, right? They didn't know smoking was dangerous. I mean, I think we have to remember that a lot of the things they did, they didn't totally know, you know, they just didn't have the same kind of information that we do today.

One of the other things that helped me was knowing, was saying like, I'm mad at this person and being okay with that. You know, it's okay to be mad at your parents for not being the parents you wanted them to be. The question is what next? And I think one of the things that has helped me is being, you know, that there's some things I was not happy about and that's okay. Yeah.

This other listener writes, can Molly talk about writing this book now while her mother has dementia? Was that freeing? I know that there's criticism about writing the book now, but honestly, writers write about people who have already passed or that doesn't seem to make people upset. Is there something about her mom having dementia that triggers people? You did struggle, Molly, with the ethics of writing this book when your mom had dementia. Yeah, address this sister's question and also how you sort of came to reconcile all that.

I mean, it's a really good question. The truth is, though, had she been totally with it, my mom would have been totally fine with this. I mean, one of the many great things about Erica John was she knew that if you write about your kids, they're going to write about you. And she didn't. And, you know, the funny thing was when the New York Times columnist called her to ask her about the about the book.

you know, even though my mom has dementia, she gave an answer that she probably would have given were she totally fine. You know, she would have given that same answer a decade ago or two decades ago, which would have been, you know, she is free to do what she wants. So I wasn't so worried about the ethics of writing about her. And in fact,

And Taffy Ackner, who's written this Erica Chong movie, who's a great writer and a great friend of mine, and also who interviewed me during this book process for an event, we talked about this. And, like, this is Erica Chong's ethos, right, to write about what really happened. So that I wasn't so worried about.

Look, the ethics of I would have it almost would have been better had she not had dementia and just but then you would not have the thing to write about. The other the other thing is that.

You know, it's very tricky to write. Like, I don't write about my kids for that reason. But with my mom, I really felt it was I didn't I was not worried about that. I think she would have been delighted. And she cared so much more about legacy than she cared about what it looked like.

Yeah. There is, though, a line where you write, now somehow the tables are turned and I'm doing to her exactly what she always did to me. This is with regard to writing all about her. Do I pretend that I am absolved or at least safe in my public judgments about her? Because I know she will never be able to read what I'm writing. I know.

And that's a real, and that's why I think people like this book is because I'm not saying that I figured it all out by any stretch of the imagination, right? I'm just saying that here I am at 46 and I'm trying to be a grownup in the world. Yeah. Well, let me bring Elizabeth in Pleasanton into the conversation. Hi, Elizabeth, you're on. Hi, I wanted to say thank you to Molly for, uh,

Having the courage to write your book, I have a draft started of a memoir of my mother. She was a single mom most of my life. I'm an only child. She was a non-drinking alcoholic who in her later years at 80 was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And after having her in assisted living for 10 years...

We brought her home thinking she only had six months or so to live. And my mother being my mother lived another seven years in my home, which meant I put off starting a law firm. I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh. I laugh to keep from crying. Keep going.

Right. I'm serious. I mean, that's what I've said to so many friends. You have to laugh about these stories that I have about my mother because as cruel as it may sound to laugh about some of them, it's either that or I probably would have killed myself at that time. And now, after 40 years with the same person, I'm alone. Having her in our home impacted my marriage. It impacted my career. Right.

I went back at 40 and did law school, but then ended up taking care of her when I should have been starting a practice, which I think is why God doesn't give us foreknowledge, right? Because I probably wouldn't have kept her for seven years if I'd known it was going to be that long.

But I just always felt like in some capacity, I had always taken care of my mother, that she'd always relied on me psychologically and emotionally, even as an adult when I was a child. And as a result, I chose not to have my own children. Wow, Elizabeth, really appreciate you sharing all of that.

And so glad to hear how much Molly's book is resonating with you. Really resonated a lot with me. Chris has an interesting question, too, with just regard. With regard to fame, Chris writes, do you find yourself having to slow yourself down with that innate pressure to maintain your literary impact? You know, I don't I, I, I.

The thing I spend a lot of time thinking about because I am still very stuck on the 2024 election cycle is what literally I have to tell you, I'm still very stuck on it.

What breaks through? So what breaks through and what breaks through to who? So a great example is we spent all this time. You know, Harris had only 100 days to run for president, spent all this time writing about it, thinking about it, podcasting about it, being on television about it. And there were people on Election Day Googling, did Joe Biden drop out?

So obviously there was a large percentage of these 300 million plus people in this country who were not involved in any of that. And and that has. So so the answer is for myself, I don't I you know, the thing that has kept me the most sane is that I try not to think about myself too much. So I don't really try to I try not to think about whether or not I'm famous or whether or not I am famous.

matter or whether or not people read my writing. But I do spend a lot of time trying to think about like, what are is what we're doing breaking through to people? And that I think is a real question. Yeah. Well, let me remind listeners, we're talking to Molly Jong fast about her memoir, How to Lose Your Mother. And you are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. So one of the things I wanted to ask you about was,

The moment when, you know, it was really confirmed for you that she has dementia and you really saw it as sort of the moment when your relationship with your mom ends. You write, this is the end of my relationship with my mom. The relationship I never got is over. The window is closing or it's closed. I will never get her attention now that the window is closed. And

And I wanted to ask you, because there's so much that you are reflecting on in the book and wrestling with in the book that you may have resolved now or things that you continue to wrestle with even to this day. But I wonder if you do feel like there is no way to have a relationship with your mom that may in some way have the elements of the one that you longed for in

even with her having dementia. And I ask this because I remember interviewing the writer and poet Ross Gay, who talked about even after his father died, his relationship with his father changed with new experiences that he had and new information that he was also absorbing about his dad. Oh, that's such a good question. Yeah, you know, I...

I think I've had a lot of experiences that have made me, have given me insight into what her life was like. Even on this book tour, you know, I was on a show and they were playing a clip of my mom being interviewed by a man who was,

It's a famous interviewer in the 70s. And you could see how she had been pushed to sort of make it, you know, he had sort of said you couldn't see the clip. They had clipped out the question. But clearly the question was something like, are you making women nymphomaniacs? Right. And she had to sort of defend herself. I mean, you could just see that it had to be something just awful. And, you

You know, my mom had such I have so much compassion for the world. You know, we think that the media environment is hard now and in certain ways it is. But the questions they asked her and the panels they put her on and the ways in which she was treated like not, you know, Norman Mailer was winning Nobel Prizes and William F. Buckley was.

you know, sort of controlling the zeitgeist. And my mom was sort of being treated like she was the happy hooker. So I do think, I mean, they had her paneled with the Mayflower Madam. I mean, it just, I do think that it was a, it was a very, so I have a lot, I really have a lot of compassion for her experiences in the world and especially in her career. And so do you think,

That has changed your dynamic with her or do you? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Or the dynamic in my head. Right. Because this is all, you know, these relationships are all actually about our relationships in our own heads with them and not so much with about them at this point. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Bonnie writes, I read and loved Fear of Flying when the book came out and was a big fan of your mother. I met her in 1982 when you were a child. I was on staff at a fitness resort where she stayed for a week. Prickly is how I would describe her. Looking back, I'm wondering what your mother was going through at that time. Was she already struggling with alcohol and at the resort to dry out? Was she going through a divorce? Yeah.

Was she always prickly? As a lifelong caregiver for my mother who became a paraplegic when I was just four years old. I look forward to reading your book. I think she was in 1982, both an alcoholic and getting divorced from my father. So, yes, I think that's correct. And I also think, yeah, I mean...

I just think a decade of people making, I mean, she had, she had a tough time. I mean, you know, you don't realize how much writers were sort of in the zeitgeist in a way they're not now. Like, remember my mom, that book sold 27 million copies. Like if you think of the biggest bestsellers now, they sell a million, 2 million, uh,

That's a huge number. So I do think that she had...

She really, it just was a completely different level of fame. And I think it did absolutely affect her. Yeah. Well, we only have a minute left. And this great question just came in from Jennifer who writes, now that your mom has dementia, does she view you differently? My mom was a great beauty and always critical of my appearance. Too fat, bad haircut, hated my red hair. The last time I saw her, she was in full-blown dementia. And she seemed to recognize me and wax poetic about what a beauty I was and how she loved my red hair.

Yeah, that is one of the great things about dementia. And I think that's a really great little anecdote. I, yes, she is. My mom was always incredibly kind to me and was like a big champion of mine. So she has just continued on that way. But I do think that she has...

You know, I called her the other day to say the book was on the New York Times bestseller list because I knew she would love that because she's very interested in her legacy. She was at the time very interested in her legacy. And I don't think she totally understood it. And that made me sad. But I was like, we're still going to get the Erica Jang movie made, mom. So this is my way of trying to make things right is to is to.

keep the legacy going. Well, I join the people who really appreciate you wrestling with your mom's relationship as she ages. And thank you, Molly Jong Fast. Thank you, Grace Wan, for producing this. And thank you, listeners. This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Support for Forum comes from the University of San Francisco School of Management. Celebrating 100 years of partnership with the Bay Area business community, the USF School of Management connects students to the city's vibrant culture, hands-on internships, and a wealth of career opportunities. Where AI and sustainability are integrated into every facet of business education.

and where students bring innovation, ethics, and entrepreneurial leadership to a planet in need.

The University of San Francisco School of Management. Change the world from here. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment. They wield the power of the law to protect people's health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, and advance clean energy to combat climate change. Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer.

Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org. Did you know that this podcast is produced at KQED, a public media organization based in San Francisco? What this means is that our content is supported not only by donations from listeners like you, but in part by federal funding.

That federal funding is the bedrock that organizations like ours need to keep serving our audiences with the trusted news, brilliant conversations, and deeply human stories that you've come to depend on. But now, the future of that funding and public media itself is under attack. And we need your support more than ever. Join the fight to protect your public media.

Learn more at protectmypublicmedia.org. That's protectmypublicmedia.org. Thank you.