Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I’m Amy McPhie Allebest. Of all the texts on our reading list, the one that I’m guessing the most people have already read is Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed. Since it came out in March, 2020, countless women have told me that I “have to read it,” and I’m so glad I finally did. And I added it to the reading list because I often get listeners saying “Ok, now that we know how patriarchy developed, now that we understand the depth of the problem, what do we actually do about it in our everyday lives? And that’s what this book does, in a readable, relatable way, probably better than any other book on the reading list. And to discuss the book with me, I’m so happy to have the brilliant Lane Anderson. Hi, Lane! Lane:
Amy: Lane and I met in Jerusalem, when we were both studying abroad during college, and then we had English classes together after Jerusalem. But we had since lost touch and I’m so happy to have reconnected. (Invite to share bio)
Lane: Bio
I was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, as the oldest of four daughters. I moved to the Bay Area after college at BYU where I got my first job as a magazine editor there, then I moved to New York City for graduate school and I have been here in New York ever since. I have moved between working as a full-time journalist and working in academia for my whole career, and I’m now a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University, where I’m full time faculty teaching writing. I’m also a freelance journalist and my work has appeared on NPR, Psychology Today, Outside Magazine, as well as SL Trib and Deseret News there in Utah. I spent years writing hundreds of articles about poverty and social justice issues, and in the process I noticed that a lot of things that impact women and girls and small children and families gets under-reported, or not reported very well, and I started focusing on writing about those issues in particular. And then, about three years ago, I had my daughter, and those issues struck home even more--how systemic issues like healthcare, housing, lack of family supports that other mid-to-high income countries have like paid leave, subsidized child care, preschool, are making life in the U.S. really hard for women and parents. Around that time I met Allison Lichter, who was formerly at WSJ and WNYC, who is now the Director of the Journalism + Design program at The New School here in New York, at a journalism conference, and we discovered that we were both passionate--and mad--about a lot of these issues. So we started a Substack newsletter earlier this year called “Matriarchy Report” where we write about these issues and unpack how we got to this place in the U.S. where life is harder for women and families than it is in other countries, and solutions to make it better. Matriarchy Report has grown quite a bit since we started it and we just got a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network to grow it some more, so that’s exciting. And that’s what I work on and what I’m passionate about.
Last year during COVID my family moved back to SLC and rented a house there around the corner from my sister and close to my dad, which was the silver lining of being displaced during COVID. So I actually did move back to Utah for a year which I didn’t see coming! But we returned to our apt. In New York in June, and now I live in Manhattan again with my partner and my three-year old daughter, and I guess I’m a bonafide New Yorker now because I’ve been here for over 15 years now and it feels like home.
Amy: Thoughts on Breaking Down Patriarchy?
Lane: Thoughts
I love this project because it’s about reading essential texts--which as a writer and a professor who teaches writing it’s right up my alley. And it’s also up my alley as a feminist. I was raised in the Mormon/LDS church, like you Amy, and I don’t affiliate with the church any more, but I was in it for 30+ years and a lot of my loved ones--friends