To Kill a Mockingbird

Hey book lovers and fascism haters! In this episode of Barred Books, Addie J. King joins us to discuss the seminal novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. 

Since this story is set at the tail end of the Prohibition/Depression era, we paired our discussion with The Greyhound, which is a mix of gin (or vodka, for you modernists) and grapefruit juice. You can use the linked recipe or follow our adjustments below. 

Or not. You know. There's no rules. You do you. 

The Greyhound

2 oz gin (juniper- or citrus-forward profiles work great here)

4 oz freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice

Combine and shake in a tin with ice until chilled. Double strain into a glass and enjoy. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome to Bard Books, the podcast that mixes band books, booze, and conversation into one delightfully chaotic mix. I'm your host, Kelly Swales, and today we're discussing Herperly's classic novel to kill a Mockingbird. Buckle in, gang, because we're going to get a little introspective in here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

So my name is Addie J. King. I'm an attorney in my day job. I handle uh criminal defense, I do guardian item work, juvenile delinquency, children's services cases, uh, things of that nature. But I'm also the author of the Grim Legacy series, the Hawk and Walt Files series, and a number of short stories. I'm also a I co-edited an anthology about middle-aged and up protagonists saving the world called Never Too Old to Save the World. And it's all available all on Amazon and anywhere you can find books, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Awesome, awesome. Well, uh, before we kind of get into the meat of our discussion, I want to talk about the cocktail that I chose to pair with our discussion today. It's uh The Greyhound, which is a cocktail from the 1930s. And a lot of the sources I read said, hey, this is uh available in the Savoy cocktail book. And uh I own that book and it wasn't in my edition. But anyway, regardless, it's all over the internet, and we'll post a link up on the website and on the Patreon. But basically, it's gin or vodka mixed with grapefruit juice. And since this is kind of set in Prohibition era, and since vodka wasn't really available in the States until the 50s, I use gin. But I understand, Addy, that you did not go that route.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I did not. I I'm not a fan of gin. Um, I I do prefer vodka to gin. I'm more of a whiskey drinker, honestly. But I'm actually using, it's called blue ice vodka. Oh. So it's an American potato vodka. It's actually pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Uh, you know what? I actually kind of prefer prefer potato vodka. I've kind of started using that in my I'm not a huge fan of fan of vodka, but if I have to use it for a cocktail, I'll I'll go for a potato vodka. All right, well, so cheers. Cheers! So on to our discussion. Uh, To Kill a Mocking Bird, as you all probably are aware, is the debut novel of Harper Lee. First published in 1960. It quickly garnered critical acclaim and widespread widespread popularity. The events of the novel are narrated by Scout Finch, kind of both as her six-year-old child self, and looking back as an adult, it kind of switches that POV a little bit. She's uh, as I said, a child aged six to eight during the course of the story. She details the life of her family and those the lives of her neighbors, and more most importantly, probably for the crux of the novel, is a uh trial that her father, Atticus Finch, is defending a defendant, a black man who is accused of raping a white woman in town. I think I first read this book in my early 20s. It's one of those books where I never came across it in high school or college. And so afterwards, I tried to kind of catch up on a lot of the classics that I didn't have to read. And I remember really liking it, but I have to say, rereading it now as an adult, and especially being more tuned in and aware of racial uh issues and inequalities and stuff in the United States, is I found it really, really striking in a lot of regards. And I think the first thing I want to talk about really is just from the writing standpoint is like the prose of the novel. I think Lee gets does a very good job of getting kind of into the head of a six or seven or eight-year-old and telling that point of view really well. Whereas here's this little little girl who's wrong about a lot of things just because she hasn't had had a whole lot of life experience yet. But on the other hand, she's pretty astute and picks up on things pretty well. Is there anything that struck you about that just in terms of like the POB in the storytelling on your end?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Well, I I remember reading at one point a uh a critique of the book, and they said that that they didn't like the idea that this six-year-old sounded so, I guess, erudite, um, is a good word for that, more sophisticated. And, you know, I I get it. I mean, it's it's a trap we can fall into as writers when we're writing a a lot younger protagonist than what we are. But I did think that the prose and the storytelling became more layered the more you you saw that Scout realizing that she was wrong about things, that she was learning that there was just more to life than what she'd originally thought. And so I thought it works for the book, even if it does start off a little bit, you know, more sophisticated than a six-year-old would think. But she does a really good job of of keeping it to the perspective of that six-year-old.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah, I I I think it works really well, but I I also think that and this is you know, just kind of in my head, it's like Atticus clearly raises Scout and her brother Jim in such a way that he treats them as like little adults. He does. You know, and you know, they're very well read and they read as a family, and you know, like he expects good behavior from them, not because he they have to obey him, but because that's just how you act, right? So I think having that sort of parent figure, an adult figure in your life will go a long way toward making you be more mature than it feels like you should be when you're six, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Well, absolutely. And let me say this I I'm an older parent. I mean, I'm a stepmom and a mom. I'm gonna be 50 this year. My daughter is 10. So I I've always been one that has encouraged reading and stuff like that. But at the same time, you know, I think that does come with she's surrounded by people who are very smart, she's surrounded by people very educated. And I'm not just talking about me, I'm talking about my husband, I'm talking about our friends, I'm talking about some of our family members. So she's been exposed to a lot of vocabulary that like a six-year-old might not have been when she was six. And so I think Scout was kind of the same way. She was exposed to language and and thoughts and ideas and things like that because of you know the cultural background that Atticus brought to his kids. And that's a good thing, but it I think it also puts them in a different place than some of their peers.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah, yeah, I I would absolutely agree. I will say reading the book this time, I was not kicked it, it didn't kick me out of the story. I I at no point thought like, oh, the six-year-old's too smart or whatever, this isn't realistic, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Because the character was described in that way with Atticus bringing home books and and treating them like adults, I think it fit.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Uh, I wonder too how much of it is that I just kind of in a lot of ways related to Scout. On one hand, it's like our life wasn't the same at all, right? Like I didn't grow up in the deep south, I didn't grow up in the in the 60s, I didn't uh grow up with a parent who was an attorney or or you know, like prominent in in town or whatever. But on the other hand, it's like, yeah, did I grow up a small town? Yeah, did I grow up in a small town in southern Illinois, which in a lot of ways and in a lot of attitudes and respects is basically south. You know, so like overall, I feel like the setting I resonated with and I resonated with her as a character. So I think maybe I would have had a tendency to overlook some of those things, some of those criticisms that I think other readers have had.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah, I'm right there with you. I grew up in a small town in Ohio, and I I do come from a family that had some prominent roles in our town. They weren't lawyers, but local business people, um, well known in town. And so we were I I wouldn't say a rich family, but we were we did okay. We were a middle-class family, living out in the country. Um, I think a little bit sheltered. And so when I read this book, I think I was in high school when I read it the first time, um, and I was really pissed off at the ending. I really was. Oh, sure. And I think it was it was that sense of of justice and fairness that is what did it. It wasn't that it was badly written, it's not that the ending didn't fit. It absolutely did, but I I wanted Tom to win. Yeah, you want to win. I wanted him to have the happy ending, you know. But do you know how many people that book inspired to go to law school? Really? Oh my gosh. I but think about the timing. So this book came out in 1960, but Gideon versus Wainwright, which is a case from the U.S. Supreme Court, came down in 1963. Okay, so just three years later, when the like the whole country has been reading this book for three years, and it's been such a big hit. And that case is the one that said that states are required to provide for indigent defense. Oh, really? Yeah, a lot of people don't realize the timing here on that.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Oh, I I was not aware.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

So, and so I wonder sometimes it has to have had a cultural impact on how we got to that point. Because, I mean, this is what was requiring the states to provide it. Okay. There's always been a right to counsel, but the question is whether you had to pay for it or not.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

And if you can't afford it, then tough luck.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

There it is, right there. And I do a lot of that kind of work right now. Sure. So, yeah, I spent 10 years as a prosecutor. I I went and did some work with a um child support agency for a little while, and then I went out on my own in private practice, and I take on a lot of publicly appointed criminal defense, juvenile delinquency. Children's services cases also get appointed attorneys if they can't afford it, because the right to raise your own children is considered a fundamental right. Right. So I anything that carries jail time now, if you can't afford an attorney, you can apply for a public defender. Not every county has a public defender's office, though, and so private attorneys take appointments when there is no public defender's office or when the public defender's office has a conflict.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Much like a spinch does in the book. He's he's asked by the judge to take the case and he does it.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Right. And he does it. But my question, and it doesn't really talk about it this much in the book, is did he ever get paid for it? I have to assume no. I don't think he did. I have to assume no, because they weren't required to pay for it.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yeah, yeah, it must have been a bono case.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

It had to have been. I mean, they they never really talk about, of course. I mean, my kids have no idea which cases I've gotten paid for or not. Like they hear me talk about, hey, I just got paid on this trial I did.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

But they don't they don't know the ins and outs of that. They just know, hey, mom got paid today. Woohoo! Maybe go to dinner, I don't know. Something along those lines, right? Right, right. So would not know that. I mean, I would assume he's not talking about that to his kids. So, I mean, he had other ways of paying his bills, but yeah, a lot of people don't realize it. And so then after that, you had this whole generation of kids who were reading this book in school that read the book and went, I want to be that person for the Tom Robinsons of my generation.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

I did not realize the impact that it had on the profession. That's pretty that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

It's rare for you to show up like to the beginning of a law school class starting like orientation or something. Somebody is gonna bring up the book.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

This is what what inspired me to go into law.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah, there's a lot of that.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For my ex, I think one of his influences was um 12 Angry Men.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, that's another one.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

But a lot of people don't know 12 Angry Men anymore. Okay. I mean, it's a great movie. I and they've even remade it, and I thought the remake was actually pretty good. But yeah, but kids are still reading to Kill a Mockingbird in school.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

That's I mean, I knew that kids were still reading it in school. I guess I just I didn't realize the impact that it had.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Well, and not just that, but also on women getting into the profession. I mean, how many of them, like you and I are talking about, we related to Scout and Scout seeing all these prejudices and all these imperfections in the system. And hey, I want to be that person. I want to be the person who tries to fix this, I want to make it better. Right. And so I think it also um subconsciously had an effect on the women of our generation as well.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Well, and I don't, I think not even in terms of like profession or going into law. I want to say, because I was I was gonna bring this up, just the general polite lady society of Make Home, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:11

And how it still exists in small towns.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Oh, it sure does. But especially, I think it's it it definitely still exists today, especially in southern culture for sure. Uh, you know, scout scout's a tomboy, she wears trousers, she plays in the dirt, she, yep, right. We're both raising our hands here. It's like, yep, no. That was that was basically me as a kid. My mom called me, uh, used to call me Pig Pen after the uh peanuts character because walking in the house and dirt would just fall off of me. It's it's interesting that she that scout was like constantly pushing up against that. Like, you know, her aunts or some of the other townspeople were like, hey, it's gonna be time for you to be a lady soon. You're you're gonna have to stop playing at the pond and picking up frogs and running around with Jem and Dill.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Well, but how many of us heard that when we were kids? It's time to grow up, it's time to be a lady, it's time to put yourself together, it's it's time to, you know, up your game, it's time to be ladylike. It's you know, we've we've all heard that. Not that it's not a lesson that a lot of us needed. I mean, I'm I'm sure I would not have been welcome in in law school in overalls and you know mud from the barn. I mean, that that was probably not gonna be a good thing. But I mean, at the same time, you you do see this expectation from, and I hate to say it, but the white ladies society.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Oh, 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

And you still see it in small town. Okay. I mean, I I still live in, it's not the same town I grew up in, it's 10 minutes down the road. Um, so it's basically the backyard of what I grew up and part of the same county and all of that. There's always been a population of people in a in this rural area that have a very nice life. And so all of these issues that that come up in this book with race and gender and class and you know, all of that, they don't see it because it's not part of their daily lived experience. And so when somebody brings up that it exists in their small town, they're offended and they think that talking about it makes their town look bad. We've just run into that in our town because there was a book that just came out in October of 2025 called Paper Girl. It's by Beth Macy, who's the author who wrote Dopesick. She is from the town I live in right now. And so she was writing about, you know, um political polarization in small towns, education, small town newspapers, things like that. And she was talking about a lot of the problems that some of these kids are growing up with now. These are the kids that are growing up from the uh opioid epidemic. They were the kids of the addicts. Um, it it talks some about you know sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, children services cases, kids dealing with gender issues and things like that. And there are people in town that have been offended by that book. Oh, sure, because she's talking about the stuff that exists. It's stuff I deal with in my job all the time.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

But it's, you know, hey, we don't need to talk about that. That's unpleasant. Yeah, I was gonna bring up that, you know, like on the surface, like whenever you look up like book bands or you go on the ALA website and it's like, why is the Kill a Mockingburn banned? It's usually the language. It's like, well, this book says the N-word a lot, and we don't think our kids need to be reading about that.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Well, but how much of that is if I can get this book banned because of this bad word that everybody agrees is a bad word, then we're not gonna be talking about these topics that I don't want to talk about about my town.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Exactly. That's exactly where I was getting to. It's like, yeah, I don't think it's because it's they're saying the n-word. I think it's because you don't want to look in the fucking mirror and think about how you're about your biases or or how you're racist or how you treat other people of other cultures or ethnic ethnicities different. You don't want to think about that. So we're just gonna say, well, they see the say the n-word and you can't read the book.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah. I was literally, I I think it was about a month or so ago, I had a table set up at a book event here in my town. Um, and just for clarification, I live in Urbana, Ohio. There's a lot of great things about my town. This is also Jim Jordan's hometown. Um Clacy Brown, uh, who's in SpongeBob, he's he's from this town. Um, and you know, the book I was talking about that Beth Macy wrote is is set here, and it's about her growing up here and the parallels she sees with kids today. But I had set up and I was selling books at this event, and I had a woman come through and say that she was also an author and had a book about to come out. And I said, Well, I I think we should have more authors from our town. Our town is great. And she started on a rant about Beth's book, and I was like, wait a minute, back up. I work with almost everybody she quoted in the book, and these are the things we see in these cases. And she just kind of blinked and looked at me and went, You mean that actually happens here? Yeah, yeah, that actually happens all the time. So I we we like to think that we have gotten rid of some of this stuff, but I mean, there's there's a case that's been in the news um in Venton County, Ohio, where they've just removed 16 kids uh from a uh a really bad house. And you know, it's still happening. And I I was thinking about that case, it's been in the news a lot when I was thinking about the um Yule family. And um to kill a mockingbird. It's the same kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

I was I really wanted to dig into the Yule family. It's interesting that you called them the Yule family because in my head it was like the Ewells. It's so interesting to me where because I, you know, like having grown up in a small town, the town I grew up in had like 2,500 people, and I think still has around 2,500 people. And there was very much like a rural, rural city, quote unquote city divide where the town kids tended to be a little bit more financially well off, their families, and the country kids tended to be a little less well off, you know, financially speaking, or whatever. Like my dad was born in 1949 and he was born at home, like he wasn't born at home. That kind of thing. So I really uh resonated. That really resonated with me because it's like, yeah, nope, I I get that, I get that. And like like these poor kids, like these poor country kids whose families are poor, they're on welfare, uh, they're uneducated. I I hate saying uneducated, even though that's true. I I like to call them undereducated because that's a good word for it. Um because it's not that they're incapable of being educated, it's just they never had that opportunity or whatever, or never thought found the importance of it, or whatever, so they're undereducated. And then like their entire family is undereducated, and it's just like this vicious cycle that it's so hard to break. And I really wanted to talk about the the Yule family in particular, because it's obvious, or at least it was obvious to me before we get to the first trial that the Yule family is the quote-unquote white trash family in the town. Also clear to me that they're still a step uh above the black people just because they're white, even though arguably the majority of black people in town are probably better people all around than the Yules.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Some of the Yules, let's say it that way.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Yeah, some of the Yules, some of the Yules. But I I really wanted to point out where it's like, as it's kind of coming out in trial, where it's like, we're not a Accusing the dad of beating his kids and fucking his oldest daughter, but the dad's beating all the kids and fucking his oldest daughter. I just find it so interesting to me where I think probably when I read that late college, early 20s, I think I would have found that unbelievable. That it's like, okay, you're telling me that this guy is on the stand and he's on and he's saying all this, all these things, and Anakin's is bringing all this stuff out, and you're telling me that people are just going to look it the other way at the insinuation that he's screwing with his kids this way, and now living living in 2026 America and seeing who our president is and seeing the Epstein files, which we've only gotten a drop in a bucket of one area. It's like, yeah, no, that's always just been under the surface, hasn't it? It's just always been there, and just as a society, turn choose to look the other way.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

And we have for years as a society. And you know, I I've heard older people out in the community, and and obviously I'm not naming names. I'm not trying to do that to them. I mean, they're talking about their own lived experiences. But it's like, how did all this happen? It didn't happen when I was a kid. Yes, it did. It happened and you never heard of it because you were sheltered from it because nobody talked about it. Now that we're all talking about it, you see that it's a a problem and has been a problem. And what I'm telling you is it's always been a problem. Um, it doesn't take much to go back in a family tree. I mean, how many of these like ancestry, these DNA kits and stuff were starting to learn? There was an article in the Atlantic about that. Start learning that people are related, that they didn't know they were related, you know? And it's because that some of this stuff has been in the past, it was never talked about, people didn't know. Yeah. But it happened.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Yeah, I don't know if you had heard my my podcast um with Jay Wells, but she brought up an interesting thing that I think I brought it up like in two other conversations since then, is she brought up this idea of fiction uh of friction frictionless media. It's like the idea that we don't want to think about unpleasant things, so we want our books to be not unpleasant, you know, we want them to be pleasant and and not talk about these things. And but man, we have to because otherwise just keeping it in the closet just perpetuates the problem and perpetuates the cycle.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

It really does. And do you know how many families we start hearing generation after generation after generation that this has happened? And then they didn't know that it happened to the generation before. Well, they didn't know because nobody told them. You know?

SPEAKER_02 24:54

So let's talk a little bit about I want to talk about Calpurnia and Aunt Alexandra, and basically kind of their I don't want to say they have a relationship because they don't, but I want to talk about like Aunt Alexandria's attitudes towards Calpurnia and about Calpurnia, because I think they're kind of do two different things. Like Aunt Alexandra's very kind and pleasant and toward Calpurnia, who is the um the black maid woman that's basically helping raise raise the Finch kids. But like whenever the ants learn that Scout and Jim went to went to church with Calpurnia, like they went across town to the black church or whatever, it was sort of like, how dare they? What? You know, like Calpurnia has overstepped, like they don't need to be going to that church. What's what's the problem?

SPEAKER_00 25:46

And then again Yeah, it's like crossing the streams.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Yeah, yeah. It's like, no, no, no, you don't do that. And again, whenever Jem and Scout and Dill had been watching the trial, they said in the quote unquote colored section, and and Alexandra not only through a fifth that they were watching the trial, but through a fifth that they were setting in the black people section.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

They are so different, and yet they both care for these kids so much, and they're trying to put their own stamp on, but they don't necessarily want the others' stamp to be on those kits.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like Calpurnia's like, who the who the hell do you think you are, lady? Yeah, like yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, your blood can, but uh, who's been here raising these kids since what happened to Mrs. Finch happened, right? And you just kind of sweep in and you're like, well, it's time to make Scout a little lady, and here I here I am.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Well, but that's another big part of this. I mean, think about again, this book came out in 1960. So think about that in terms of like female history.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

You know, I mean, gender roles were really starting to change at that point. And how many kids that read that book even back in the 60s were starting to see, hey, there's more than one way. I don't just have to be this box, which they're trying to shove me into, because they started learning that they could learn from people from different walks of life, like Scout was learning from Calperdian.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Well, and I think too, it's you know, I think the care character of Atticus is really progressive in a lot of ways. One, how he treats his kids and raises his kids, two, how he just conducts himself in general, you know, like accepting the charge of defending a black man when basically no one else in town would do it. And also in terms of, you know, basically the attitude is like, yeah, your aunt's gonna, your aunt's gonna say what she's gonna say, but listen, kid, you can you can still wear your trousers, it's fine. You know, I just I really found that refreshing, especially for the era where Atticus is like, yeah, you can't you kids can be just who you are, and to have that freedom, have that be allowed is I think really really progressive for the time.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

I I completely agree with you. Um, but I I think it is so important to to talk about because his ability to accept his kids as they are made her such a more richer character when she was able to start reconciling some of that in her mind as you go through the book. Atticus is like a hero to so many people, and I don't think it's just because he was the lawyer that was tilting at windmills here, you know, he he was also the dad that accepted the kids he had, you know, as opposed to what he thought they were supposed to be, which is I think what the aunt was kept trying to shove them into.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

Right, right. Like you're you're supposed to, you know, Jim's supposed to be the strong older brother, you're supposed to be the little girl with the dress, and you're supposed to be coming to our missionary society tees, and you know, this is what you're supposed to be doing. This is how this goes. Um, I do want to kind of mention, I know that you said that you read the I'm gonna say biography, but it's the the tight actual title of the book is Mockingbird a Portrait of Harper Lee. And I find that wording very fascinating because obviously you can't really, at least in my mind, you can't really call it a biography if you don't speak to the actual subject.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah, I thought of it more as a memoir, you know, but but it's it's somebody else writing it, it's not her writing her own memoir. I'm kind of a sucker for those how the sausage is made kind of stories. So going behind the scenes, what was going on in her head, what was going on in her life as she was putting together this monumental testament of a book.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Yeah. I feel like even I'm not all the way through Mockingbird, I'm only about halfway through. But even so, uh it's like, wow, man, to kill a Mockingbird is I don't want to say it's autobiographical, but she pulled a lot from her own life.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Well, and did you see who the uh character of Dill was based on?

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Truman Capote.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Truman Capote, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

I knew that they were friends, and I knew that there's always been you know speculation or scuttle buzz, like, oh yeah, you know, Harper Lee didn't write this book, Truman Capote wrote it, which I think is just patriot patriarchal bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

But I do too.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Yeah. I didn't, I honest to God did not realize that they were actual, honest to God, like good friends from childhood. Like kind of going in, kind of knowing that. Uh, as I was rereading The Kill and Mockingbird, I'm like, oh, Dill is Dill is Truman.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Oh, yeah. Like when you read the book for the first time, you don't necessarily know that. I mean, I don't think he would have drawn the parallel. Oh no, no. But the minute you know that and know anything about Truman Capote or his life or his work, and just the fact that she helped him with research on his seminal work.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

You know, I mean, you start really seeing it when you look back on it once you have that knowledge. Oh, yeah. It's just another it's just another example of how we all pull from our own lives when we create fiction.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Let's bring up Dill a little bit because I found his character so fascinating. Um, just in terms of I think the way life was a lot of times, and the way life still is now for kids who maybe have a shitty home life. Where especially early on in the book, when he's younger, he makes up these fantastical tales about his family and his his dad's this and his uncle's this, and you know, he had to do this daring-do thing to get here or whatever. And then you kind of, it's never explicitly said, but you kind of get the sense where it's like, oh, there's a reason you stay in Make Home the entire summer. It's because maybe you don't want to stay at home with your dysfunctional family.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Well, and then you look at it, and when you look back, Dill is an odd bird. He just really, really is. He's he's a different kid. And it's one of those that, you know, if if he had really had an adult that really drilled down with him and really got to know him, what in the what impact would that have had? And I don't think Truman Capote really had that.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

I don't honestly, I don't know much about Truman Capote, so I can't speak to that.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Well, um, my undergrad degree was criminal justice and psychology. We talked a lot about in cold blood. Because it's true, yeah, it it's a true story. So I Truman was an interesting man, even more so when he was younger, I think. Um I I I look at the kids in my life sometimes and I'm like, that one's quirky. I can't wait to see what that one's gonna be, you know. I specifically one of my nephews, I'm like, that one's quirky. I can't wait to see what this is gonna be like. I was girl. Yeah. Well, and you know what? The kids in my family are great kids. They really are, but you know, every once in a while you've got one or two that it's like, you know what, I'm just gonna watch the ride and enjoy every minute of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

I was gonna say, which tree did you fall out of? Because it wasn't the tree.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Or sometimes it's I I'm pretty sure you fell out of the same tree I did, and maybe we're the only ones that are like that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

There's been some of that too. So I mean, I just I find it fascinating, but I'm fascinated by kids and their um psychology anyway. Okay. And I work with so many kids because I do such uh so much Guardian adultum work.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

But just listening to how their brains process the things that are sometimes really traumatic that they're going through, you know, whether it's a parent's divorce, whether you know they're the subject of a children's services investigation, whether you know they've gotten in trouble themselves because I do a lot of delinquency work, you know, just listening to the kids tell me why they got to where they are in whatever position they have is just huge. And I I enjoy every minute of it.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Oh, yeah. Obviously you do, or else you wouldn't do the work.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Well, yeah, and I have a lot of my stories that are um like preteen and teen friendly. Yeah. And I think some of it is just because I spend so much time talking to them.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Oh, sure, sure, and seeing them as people and oh yeah, and having a backdoor look into their very rich inner world. Yes. Let's talk a little bit about Boo Radley. I remembered obviously that he was a character in the book, but I didn't really remember his significance in the story. And then as I'm rereading it, I'm like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, he's like the local boogeyman character. He's the he's that house where all the kids, you know, dare each other to, you know, touch the touch the wall and it's scary and whatever. And then at the end, obviously, spoiler alert, he saves Jim and uh Scout from Bobule at the very end, and then Scout's actually able to see see Boo, and it's I'm not quite exactly clear, but it must be that he's got a condition where he can't see the light or he's extremely light sensitive or something.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Yeah, I don't think that part was really clear, but one of the things I I think of when I think of Boo Radley is he's a good example of how kids need to learn that just because somebody is other doesn't mean they're a bad person.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Right. Or scary.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

And so, right, right. And this book does that on a lot of fronts, but I think the introduction of Boo Radley means that it's not just about race. Yeah. Or gender or anything else. It's it's you know, the neighbor down the street that you never talk to that has 14 cats. I mean, they've probably got a great story. You've just never heard it.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Yeah, I guess he's he's so he's not in the the story a lot, obviously. I mean, he is in that Scout and Gem and Dale talk about him, and he's very much a presence in the story, but he's not like a a crux in any way or whatever. It's just I find I found his inclusion uh so sweet, you know, like he's trying to have like he wants to be friendly with these kids, but not in a creepy, weird, stalkery way, but just like, yeah, it's a neighbor kid's and I'm gonna leave him some toys, and then the brother's like, you know, you can't be doing that, and seals it up and whatever, which I found to be crushing a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Think about it though, in today's in today's world, and obviously this is you know several years in the future from when this book was set, much less when it was released. Um, but we really do have to be careful about our interactions with kids to make it not be creepy.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Um, I was I I was talking to a friend of mine not too long ago, and she said something about her her father had run into a family that that had a bunch of kids, and he was trying to engage with the kids. He's a grandpa, he loves talking to kids, and the mom was like backing away, terrified because this strange man was talking to her kids, and she had to like pull him aside and be like, I'm not sure you should do this with total strangers.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Um, and there was there was nothing bad going on, it was totally innocent, but because he hadn't thought about how it was coming across, and I think some of that is shown here too. It's more subtle, but it it is here that I mean, Boo wants to be accepted, he just doesn't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Yeah, and maybe maybe like the rest of the town is kind of okay that he's inside, you know. Like he's sensitive to light, he kind of wants to stay in the shadows, he doesn't want to talk. It just it it just came across to me as like, oh, he's got a disability of some sort. And I don't know if it's like a mental mental disability or a physical disability or something, but he's got a disability of some sort, and that makes that's why he is the way he is, and that's why he has to stay inside. Um, I kind of wish that was made a little bit more clear, but on the other hand, it doesn't really affect the story, so it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

It doesn't really affect the story, but here's the other thing I would say is would a six-year-old really understand, even if she knew what the diagnosis was.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Not really. I mean, by the end of the book, she's eight, but yeah, no, she wouldn't.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

It's it's one of those things. I and I guess another reason I think that is Atticus, is like, would you stop tormenting that man? Would you like would you just be chill? Come on. You know, which makes me think that other people, other neighbors know what the deal is, and they just don't talk about it. Again, polite society, we don't talk about it. Absolutely. Which is I I think a big theme of this book. It's a huge theme of this book, and kind of tangential to that, as I was as I was reading Mockingbird and it really like punched me in the face as I was reading two uh the two kill a mockingbird. Do we think Scout would have been like if she were like alive today and as a six or eight-year-old today, would she have been non-binary?

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Possibly, or maybe just a tomboy. I'm not sure that even I'm not sure even Scout would have known that at the at this age. You know what I mean? That's that's very possible, but my next question is they they hyperfocus so much on different things through the book. I kind of wonder if there was some ADHD going on there.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Oh, sure. Absolutely. Like she didn't want to go to school because they just make me do these things that I already know how to do. And my teacher's like, you know, mad that I can already read, which blew my mind, by the way. It's like, here's your first grade teacher, and she's pissed that you already know how to read. Like, in what world is this okay?

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Actually, you know what though? I'm gonna back up on that one because I was the kid that was reading it for, and when I got in trouble, it was generally because I was hiding from chores and reading. My mom was a reading teacher. Do you know what kind of a conflict that was for her? Like, she wants to yell at me for reading when I'm supposed to be vacuuming the floor, but but I'm reading, and that's her job as getting kids to read. Like, how much of a complex does that cause you?

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Yeah, you know, that's an internal conflict for sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

So then I look at Scout in this book and I'm like, okay, the teacher probably didn't know what to do with her because she already had the skill that teacher was trying to teach. And when you have a bored kid in school, a lot of times you have behavior problems.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

It's true. Yeah, like I said, it's not like a huge deal. It's not like a main thing of the book or whatever, but I just found it interesting. I mean, again, obviously, I I really saw a lot of myself and scout because you know, yep, I was a tomboy playing in dirt, thought dresses were dumb, all of that. But it just really occurred to me, and especially reading The Mockingbird, how how like Scout Nell was, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Yeah, and not only that, Mockingbird really does show you just how complex and nuanced of a person she was. Oh, yeah. I mean, she was such a recruit, and nobody really knew much about her. She didn't do a lot of interviews, she didn't really get out much, but she was such a complicated layered person that, oh my gosh, it had been so fascinating to have a conversation with her.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Oh, yeah, and did exactly what she wanted to do. Oh, yeah. That's bravery right there. Super brave, and especially at that age, in that in that era, to be like, yeah, I'm not doing that. Yeah, I'm not interested in having a husband, yeah, I'm not interested in, you know, oh sure, dad wants me to go to law school, but this kind of sucks. I want to I want to move to New York City and become a writer.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

But how many women from those eras, from the 30s when she grew up, from the 60s when the book was published? I mean, she had some opportunities that we haven't had as writers. Like nobody paid our bills for a year to be able to get a book done. Like that just doesn't happen anymore. But how many well-known women from those periods are all the women that said, I'm not doing the expected thing.

SPEAKER_02 41:59

I'm not, I'm not doing what you tell me.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, a lot of those people coming to mind are authors, but you know, it wasn't just authors.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

No, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

And so if you look at the timeline between the 30s into the 60s into now, and you see the trajectory of how women's roles have changed into society. I mean, some of these women that just said, no, I don't want to do that, I'm gonna do my own thing, and how much of that has encouraged people to do what they want to do.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Yeah. I don't want to say that men have always been able to do what they want to do because I mean patriarchy hurts us all, right? So it does. But they do have more leeway to do what they want to do for sure. Like it's not a big deal if you don't want to have kids if you're a man, it's not a big deal if you want to focus on your career as a man, it's not a big deal if you, you know, just want to be a bachelor for your entire life as a man. And that's I think all of those things have always been a thing that the right women don't do, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:57

You know, I'm laughing because you and I are both women who have have seen what we wanted and gone after it. Regardless of what was going on in our personal lives, regardless of whether you're married, not married, have kids, don't have kids, both of us have picked out careers and gone after them, and then picked a second career and went after it.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

You know, and how much of that would have been even expected or even respected back in the 30s, back in the 60s, back you know, that many generations ago. We would have been the weird ones.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Addie, I like to think that I'm still one of the weird ones. You and me both. So, Addie, we we've had like a super, super great discussion. And I know we're coming to the end of our time, and I want to be mindful of your evening. There's a question I ask uh all of my podcast guests, and I ask it in every episode of Bard books and and bard movies. And for me, the answer is I'm I'm just going to assume as always no. But uh I'll ask you, do we think this book should be banned? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. This is honestly, quite honestly, even uh subject matter aside, it's an astounding piece of work for a debut novel.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

It really is. But here's the thing, and we've talked about a lot of different themes in this book. But one thing I want to say very clearly as a former prosecutor, as a current criminal defense attorney, race is still an issue in the criminal justice system. It's better than it used to be, but it is still an issue. It still comes up, and there's a lot of pushback sometimes from people in the system saying that you're playing the race card. Sure. But the reality is it is still an issue.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

It's absolutely still an issue. Like, well, I think I said mentioned earlier, you know, like when I read this in the 20s, uh or whenever I read this whenever I was in my 20s, uh, and I was like, oh man, that wouldn't happen today, right? Like you would obviously see these the facts of this case, and obviously you you do the right thing. But reading it today, and just with everything that's going on in the world and the states and everything, it's like, oh no, no, I could still see it going this way. Yeah, I could absolutely still see it going this way.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

I was gonna say Thurgood Marshall, who was um a former Supreme Court justice, he cut his teeth as a litigator on cases just like this, just like the Tom Robinson kind of case. And uh he he won for a lot of things. He he really did a lot of good work, but at the same time, that doesn't mean the problem is completely eradicated. It's not.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

I was gonna say, I I actually I actually earmarked a page in the book, which I don't ever really do to my books because it just struck me so so hard. It's basically after after the trial, and Jim and Scott are being, you know, like the unfairness of life. And he and he says, Atticus was speaking so quiet so quietly, his last word crashed on our ears. I looked up and his face was vehement. Nothing there's nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who will take advantage of a negroes negroes' ignorance. Don't fool yourselves. It's all adding up, and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in your children's time.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

God, even just reading that line. Gives you chills. I think that bill is coming due. And I really, really, really fucking hope that all the white people around us realize that that bill is due and we need to fucking pay it.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Yeah, there's truth to it, and there's a lot of different ways that bill can be paid. And some of it is just awareness, some of it is educating yourself, some of it is getting to know people outside of your own bubble.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

You know, and that's a lot of what this book is about, is is finding the people who are not in that perfect bubble that that you've thought you lived in all your life. Right. Getting out, meeting people, meeting the people that you didn't think you'd ever talk to, meeting the people that are from different walks of life. And seeing people exactly. And we all are people. It doesn't matter race, gender, creed, preference, none of that matters. We are all people and we should all be equal under the law.

SPEAKER_02 47:28

Addie, I couldn't have said it better myself. I want to thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Uh, let's do it again. Absolutely. Thank you also to all the listeners out there for hanging out with us. Make sure to check our out our Patreon page. Subscribers get a sneak peek at our lineup and can listen to the podcast before the rest of the peons can. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And hey, tell your friends about us. Why don't you? This is Kelly Swales, and you've been listening to Bard Books. Catch you next time.