Memoirist Koren Zailckas Talks To Rachel About Her New Memoir "Fury"

When I heard Koren Zailckas had written another memoir, I was really excited. Her first book, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, blew the cover on girls and drinking. In heartbreaking detail, Koren explored the destructive relationship between girls and alcohol. Not unlike young girls who sing like grown women, Koren's voice and prose seemed beyond her years. Now, Koren's back with Fury, a new book about anger, and she A'd a few Q's I had for her.First, a few words about the new book (from the book jacket): In the years following the publication of Smashed, Koren stays sober and relegates binge drinking to her past. But a psychological legacy of repression lingers. Her sobriety is a loose surface layer atop a hard-packed, unacknowledged rage that wreaks havoc on Koren emotionally and professionally. When a failed relationship leads Koren back to her childhood home, she sinks into emotional crisis: writer's block, depression, anxiety.Only when she begins to apply her research on a book about anger to the turmoil of her own life does she learn what denial has cost her. The result is a blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered. Combining sophisticated sociological research with a dramatic and deeply personal story that grapples boldly with identity and family, Fury is a dazzling work by a young writer at the height of her powers that is certain to touch a cultural nerve.RS: How would you define a healthy relationship to anger?

I think someone with a healthy relationship with anger accepts that it's a natural, normal, human emotion that's there to help her in an emergency.

She expresses her anger directly and one-on-one with the person involved in the moment that the feeling arises. She doesn't go away and stew on the matter; doesn't put it in an email; doesn't put it in an anonymous letter; doesn't seek revenge by ignoring or excluding the offending person; doesn't gossip; doesn't spread rumors or assemble a small army of other women or girls who have similar grievances with her foe.As she's talking out the conflict, she resists the urge to blame or name-call. Instead, she focuses on expressing the deeper source of her fury (most often, a feeling of fear or sorrow). Instead of saying things like, "You're insensitive" or "You only ever think about yourself," she opens up, speaks from the heart and makes herself vulnerable. She says something like, "When you don't (fill in the blank), it makes me feel hurt and a little rejected."Finally, she doesn't air her anger because she thinks she can change the other person or achieve some desired affect. She speaks up because her anger is genuine. She does it because she's human--not a saint, not a sinner, not a perfection-seeking robot--and all humans occasionally get ticked-off. She speaks her anger because she knows it's essential to fight with the people she loves. Also, she's happiest when what she's saying aligns with what she truly feels.RS: What advice do you have for girls and women who struggle with the Curse of the Good Girl, and who have trouble accessing their anger?I speak from experience when I say, if you're the type of person who grew up with the belief that anger was dangerous--or that anger and love are incompatible--it can be very difficult to be persuaded otherwise.I think talking with a therapist works wonders. It's an incredible thing to open up to a counselor for the first time and reveal all the things that are driving you half-crazy with rage. Inevitably, you discover that the world doesn't end. The therapist doesn't storm out in disgust. In fact, she empathizes with you. The conversation makes you feel closer to her and more in touch with the person you really are. Suddenly--maybe for the first time ever--you can picture yourself going and saying the exact same things to the people you're having conflicts with. Therapy becomes like a dress rehearsal or a training session for confrontations. Eventually, you find the self-confidence, language and conviction to speak up in the moment, instead of waiting until a later date.

I also think therapy is great for the Good Girl simply because it requires her to tap into and acknowledge her emotions. Good girls are people-pleasers and we're often much better at reading other people's feelings than we are at recognizing and expressing our own.

RS: How can parents raise girls who feel authorized to express their anger?Parents have various opinions on whether or not they ought to fight in front of their children. I, for one, think it's essential.Over the course of writing Fury, I had a daughter of my own. Becoming a mom really makes you reflect on your own girlhood. It makes you acutely aware of which parenting patterns you do and don't want to repeat. I spent a lot of time reflecting and talking with my husband about how to handle anger in our home and how we want to approach it with our kids. As a mom, I always want my daughter to feel respected and heard. Likewise, I always want her to know that she can come to me when she's angry, hurting, in need of help or just in need of a safe place to vent and it won't in any way diminish my love for her.

The only way I can really make that message clear is to be genuine, both in my relationship with her and with my husband. I want her to grow up in a household where she sees the full life cycle of an argument: how disagreements crop up, how my husband and I talk them out, and how conflict can even sometimes bring people closer together (this, as opposed to tearing them apart). If she grows up in a household that's as peaceful as a lotus flower, she'll never learn the language that she needs to weather conflicts with her friends, at school and out there in the world at large.

Fury is available from Amazon.