The controversial analysis of race in Everything’s Fine has ruffled some feathers, but author Cecilia Rabess isn’t too fazed.
Everything’s FineRabess wants her first novel to crack open the complexity of dating and love today, but she does not profess to have the answers to everyone’s questions. Speaking to the writer, it’s clear that she has a deep relationship to books and knew that writing a love story set against the backdrop of the 2016 election could be controversial.
For someone who’s a writer and uses her imagination quite liberally, I do find it hard to imagine the future for myself. But, like with any other industry, once you’re on the outside looking in, it’s way more and way less interesting than anyone could imagine. The same could be said for finance, which is why people are interested in an insider perspective.
In 2018, we were reasonably deep into the Trump presidency and the discourse had gone completely sideways. We were left versus right, shouting back and forth across a very bright line. Many people on the left, like myself, were still processing and figuring out who we were as a country and what had happened. The popular narrative was all about reaching across the aisle, and there were all these mythologized, shallow takes on the Trump voter.
What led you to create Jess? I always want more Black women to be at the center of love stories and romance, because we’re getting it in real life but not always seeing that on the page. Why does he have to be like that? And why does she have to pursue a relationship with someone who may not fully see her and meet her on terms that most would consider healthy and helpful? I wanted to reject those easy binaries of right and wrong. The insidiousness of it all means there’s good in bad people and bad in good people, so we have to do more work. Jess has internalized a lot of the bad and things that Josh takes for granted and doesn’t see fully.
The thing about it that surprised me most was the quite strong racist undertones to some of the blowback I received over the book. People were questioning the limits of my imagination as a Black writer, and they were conflating me with my character, suggesting there’s no way this could be fiction and nuanced. That there was no way I could write a story that asks more questions than it answers.
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