[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_blurb title=”From Beth Macy ‘Love Persists'” image=”https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Paper-Girl-cover.jpg.webp” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” title_text=”Paper-Girl-cover.jpg” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
From Beth Macy: Love Persists “if you tend it like a flame.” (And other lessions from from my “Paper Girl” tour.) Posted with permission from Beth Macy from her October 12, 2025 post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve done six events and more than a dozen interviews in the few days since my book, <\/span>Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America<\/em>, came out last week. And everywhere I\u2019ve spoken, I\u2019ve met readers who are desperate for advice on navigating America\u2019s gaping political wounds and its descent into authoritarianism.<\/span><\/p>\n In Louisville, Ky., an Army veteran in his 80s came up to say he\u2019d inhaled the book in a single day. \u201cI\u2019m so scared, I want to move to Portugal,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we can\u2019t afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n Yesterday, at a Banned Books Festival in Des Moines, I was floored to hear that my favorite childhood book, <\/span>Harriet the Spy<\/em>, had been banned in Iowa \u201cbecause, critics said, it celebrated defiance of young women,\u201d an organizer told me. More than any other, that book seeded my writerly curiosity. And, yes, my defiance too.<\/span><\/p>\n In my home city of Roanoke, Va., for a live podcast that also featured my kid\u2019s band <\/span>Palmyra<\/a> and University of Virginia professor Rachel Wahl, a woman described coming out as gay to her father\u2014and receiving a stony silence in response. A week later, she started a Gay Straight Alliance chapter at her high school. Within a week, her taciturn dad placed a two-page letter on her pillow.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe apologized for how his reaction and feelings alienated me and was proud I fought the principal and school board to support other people like me. He is a man of few words, and he filled the front and back of the page,\u201d she said. \u201cI still have that letter and I pull it out when he talks about his most recent conspiracy theory. He loves me, somewhere in there, he still loves me.\u201d<\/p>\n Another woman described the estrangement she\u2019d had with a dear childhood friend who stopped responding to her calls and texts based on their political differences\u2014until she literally met her old friend where she was:<\/p>\n \u201cIn a last ditch effort to reconnect and make it clear that I simply love her\u2014no strings\u2014I joined a Facebook Live event she hosted to sell some kind of all natural household cleaning products through a personal sales scheme of some sort. It was a perfect indirect opening, we were able to resume our friendship, <\/span>and<\/em> I have weird bar soap for couch stains that REALLY works\u2026.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n According to a recent New York Times\/Sienna poll, <\/span>Americans now view our political divisions as the single-most important issue<\/a>impacting the country. Which makes the response to Paper Girl all the more poignant. None of us has easy answers, but it\u2019s so important to try to sit with the questions and, in the words of the great Barbara Kingsolver, tend to our relationships, even the hard ones, like we \u201ctend to a flame.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m so grateful to reviewers at <\/span>The New York Times<\/a>, Washington Post, and elsewhere for overwhelmingly positive reviews. <\/span>Leigh Haber, writing in the Post<\/a>, said: \u201cThere couldn\u2019t be a timelier book . . . In this venture, Macy follows closely in the footsteps of such heroic journalists as Barbara Ehrenreich and Tracy Kidder, combining memoir with reportage, a raft of sobering statistics and, most uniquely in our era, a willingness to engage in uncomfortable conversations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Fourth-generation newspaper owner <\/span>Douglas Burns wrote an incisive<\/a> piece for the Iowa Mercury, and NBC\u2019s estimable <\/span>Kate Sn<\/a>ow interviewed me for her show. I also spoke at length with NPR hosts <\/span>Dave Davies of Fresh Air<\/a> and <\/span>Ailsa Chang of All Things Considered<\/a>. I appreciated <\/span>hometown coverage in Cardinal News<\/a> by Mike Allen, <\/span>Dan Casey<\/a> in The Roanoke Times, and <\/span>Jeff Bossert of WVTF<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n The conversations are still happening (the rest of my <\/span>tour can be found here<\/a>)\u2014 including tomorrow\u2019s free online event with Anna Quindlen via San Francisco\u2019s Book Passage store, which I\u2019m so stoked about! <\/span>Register here to join us<\/a> at 4 p.m. ET\/1 p.m. PT. <\/span><\/p>\n Thanks to all the booksellers who\u2019ve hosted events, especially Holland Saltsman of Novel Neighbor, a community gathering spot and sacred space in St. Louis.<\/p>\n And thanks to my amazing team at Penguin Press for taking such great care of me.<\/p>\n Thanks to all who have read the book and shared feedback and ideas\u2014feel free to hit me up with your own stories of bridging the divide by replying to this message. (And if you haven\u2019t yet, please leave your <\/span>own review at Goodreads<\/a>!)<\/span><\/p>\n And to everyone who reached out to donate money to Silas James, the \u201cyoung me\u201d profiled in the book and <\/span>in my NYT excerpt<\/a>, thanks so much. You can also help needy kids in my hometown by supporting the <\/span>Urbana Youth Center here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_blurb][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Beth Macy: Love Persists “if you tend it like a flame.” (And other lessions from from my “Paper Girl” tour.) Posted with permission from Beth Macy from her October 12, 2025 post.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done six events and more than a dozen interviews in the few days since my book, Paper Girl: A Memoir of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodvirginia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}