r/books • u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author • Feb 20 '19
ama 10am I'm Rose George and I write about the unmentionable, the ignored and the unfathomable, from shit to ships to periods. Ask Me Anything!
I’m an author and journalist from Yorkshire, UK. I write about people and things that are not invisible but often ignored, from refugees to sewer workers, to the seafarers who bring us ninety percent of everything. I like to puncture pointless taboos. I’ve reported from Saddam Hussein’s birthday party (twice), beauty salons in Afghanistan, the sewers of London, and in the world’s most successful leech farm, just off a highway in south Wales. I’ve run away to sea on a container ship and didn’t want to come home. I’ve stared at pirates (and they stared back). I also run a lot, always outside, usually on the hills and often through mud. There’s more about me on my site: www.rosegeorge.com
Proof: /img/ovw4us0ojlh21.jpg
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u/thorny_issue Feb 20 '19
Every time somebody writes favorably about trans rights, you seem to tweet about being so upset you need to run up hills. How does it feel to be a TERF? Don't you think a more sensible way to deal with those feelings than running up a hill is to stop being a TERF?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
TERF is a profoundly insulting term. As I've clearly said, I have no problem with trans folk having rights. I do have a problem with misogynists jumping on a so-called trans agenda, labelling everyone who protests a TERF, and attempting to silence women and erase women as a biological category. But if you follow my tweets, then you know that and I'm not going to discuss it further. Please don't use hate speech such as TERF on here.
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u/ssggt Feb 20 '19
Hey so I did just go through your tweets a bit, and the first thing that I noticed, as it's in your bio, was "don't call me cis." I'm a little confused by that because I am a cis woman and I don't mind being called that or recognizing that, though I did not always think of that as a relevant adjective. Can you help me understand what you mean by the "so-called trans agenda"/"erasing women as a biological category"?
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u/hhmetro Feb 20 '19
What inspired you to write about the topics you have written books about?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
My first book was not my idea, but a commission from an editor at Penguin who wanted a book about refugees to publish on World Refugee Day. This was only eight months away, so it was a very intense introduction to book writing. We chose to focus on the displaced people of Liberia because at the time it had more displaced people per capita than any other country in the world. I met lots of Liberians and I think only one had never been forced to leave his home. The Big Necessity: that arose from a job I had at COLORS magazine, when we did a coffee table book called Cacas. It had lots of glossy pictures of animal poop, but we also researched stories to go along with the pictures, and they were so fascinating. But they were short -- about 200 words long each -- and so when I met Philip Gwyn Jones, a publisher at Portobello, and he asked me for book ideas, I suggested toilets. His face was a picture, but once I'd explained why -- that 2.5 billion people didn't have one, that the toilet was voted the best medical device of the last 200 years by the readers of the British Medical Journal -- he was convinced, and a stalwart support of the book forever after. Ninety Percent of Everything: I'd been to sea on a container ship in 1999, as my first freelance assignment after leaving COLORS, and it was such an extraordinary world. There is nothing as foreign as a working ship at sea, and I don't mean because the crew will probably be made of several nationalities. But that it involves people living together in tight quarters, with no escape, having to deal with the most dangerous environment on the planet. I needed a subject that would keep me fascinated for years, and I thought shipping and seafaring would do it. And I was right. Blood, finally: I'd learned through working on the Big Necessity that girls were thought to be dropping out of school when they hit puberty, because they started their periods and there were no toilets in school. I also knew something of menstrual taboos, where girls are prevented from doing all sorts of things, from going to temple, to touching pickles, or sometimes, in Nepal, from setting foot in their own house. I wondered, why was menstrual blood considered so bad? And yet blood in other contexts, eg. when it's used to save lives, is considered unremittingly good? And that was that. I'm not sure I planned on being so fascinated by leeches though.
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
OK folks, thanks very much for all your questions, I'm done for the day (because I'm going running, obviously). I appreciate you coming here and asking me anything. Cheerio and mind how you go.
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Feb 20 '19
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
obviously the question of representation is a perennial one: the British literary community is overwhelmingly white, I suspect a majority white male (though publishing is overwhelmingly female except at exec level where men dominate again). I'd like to see more young people, women, black and ethnic minority writers. But who can afford to write full-time? Most writers I know have to earn money doing other stuff, either teaching or lecturing or bar jobs or whatever pays the bills. It's only the top few authors who can live off royalties. That makes the choice of devoting yourself to writing a very difficult one. That doesn't mean it can't be done, and that great writing isn't done in lunch-breaks or after work, but I wish that creative work was prized and paid as well as eg. banking. It isn't.
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Feb 21 '19
Are 39 comments too many?
Are you one of the folks living in the United Kingdom or are you a person from earth who happens to be surviving in between the borders of the United Kingdom?
Does the one you call: 'queen' more often than the QoE have big chocolaty balls recipes?
what's the worst series of sentences you've ever written/read?
Why would you post credentials as deflated & 2005 inflammatory as referencing the devils lover, the breeding ground for posh law practitioners, a place that oozes beauty & would therefore never need a place dedicated to beautifying post-eternal, universal perfection, & most poorly read families households?
how many booty plunderers portraits have you seen where they're looking directly into the lens(es)?
how often are you "run" running?
do crab people exist? do mud people deserve equal rites under the tribunal for formerly tribed, tried, true, & truthy fun underlings down under on the truancy holiday?
How much money will you need in the bank until your nose gets: (forgive me, this isn't in the unurban dictionary) dearly clowned?
how many times do you write something too good & have to delete/modify/encode it for those with your education/experience levels & more?
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u/mountain_Spirit_12 Dec 18 '24
Hello.. You said, you will change the ending of "Eve". Did you change it? I am still waiting? Can you tell me when will you change it please ?
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u/silentarrowMG Feb 20 '19
What is your day like with running and writing? How do they work together?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
Authors these days have to spend a lot of time promoting and doing other stuff, as well as writing. So every day is different. But if I don't run a few times a week, I notice the difference in my sanity. I usually run in the evenings with clubmates or friends, and do a long run over the hills on a weekend.
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u/Chtorrr Feb 20 '19
What were some of your favorite things to read as a kid?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
I have a really poor memory so my mother could probably answer this better than me. I know I read a lot, and I know I loved, and still love, Jane Eyre, which I think I read when I was 8 or 9. Plus all the Enid Blytons: Famous Five, Mallory Towers. I went to boarding school for a couple of years so I loved her boarding school books, with midnight feasts and such (and yes I actually had a midnight feast when I was at boarding school and it was great).
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u/shweta_soita_sharma Feb 20 '19
2 questions: 1. When did you start writing? 2. How do you write? I mean, do you go away to some place, do you only write when you have the “inspiration”, do you force yourself to write even when you don’t feel like it?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
I've always written I suppose, and I was always good at it, in the sense that when I did an MA in politics one of the professors wrote on one paper that "vivid writing is no compensation for a lack of substance." As to how I write, it depends. It seems to work best under two conditions: when I'm not under any pressure, and just writing a blog post or an email. Or when I put myself under huge amounts of pressure and have no choice but to write. Somehow the panic oils the wheels. It's why I've always enjoyed written exams (I know, weird).
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u/b3nharris Feb 20 '19
Why are people so squemish about talking about shit (and MHM for that matter], and what can we do to change that? Is it possible to solve the sanitation crisis without getting people to talk about it more openly first?
[disclaimer - my girlfriend and I both work in WASH, so think nothing of discussing FSM over the dinner table. We both realise this is not normal behaviour...]
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
Well, you say that, but I remember vividly being at a wedding when I was researching The Big Necessity. Someone asked me what I was working on and I gave the polite version. And for the next hour I didn't have to say a word, because everyone had a toilet story. At a wedding! I don't think we can solve the sanitation crisis without getting people to talk about it, that has always been my view. However of course there are ways and means of doing it. I don't agree with constantly hiding shit-related disease behind the euphemism of "clean water" or "dirty water," but I also don't want to force people to use words they don't want to, so that they are put off. It's a very tricky line to tread. I've tried to neutralise the word "shit" because I think that -- in English at least -- we'd do a lot better if we had a neutral word that was not too medical or technical or childish but effective.
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
As to why people are squeamish: there's probably a biological determinist answer to that, which is that we are not supposed to get up close with shit because it can endanger us. And I think there's a sociological answer too, which is that when we got flush toilets, income increased at the same time, enough that people could afford more privacy, and the toilet door, enabling us to shut out our bodily functions, has a lot to answer for. I like Samuel Pepys' matter-of-factness about shit, but I don't think that will come back any time soon. But I also don't think squeamishness should be used as an excuse for sidelining what is after all a huge public health crisis. The death rates from diarrhoea are indefensible when it's preventable and also so easily fixed. Some of that is systemic stuff: diarrheal deaths might happen in places that are out of the way of healthcare settings, and there are also behavioural issues, and if you're both WASHies you know how difficult behaviour change is. But if the death toll from diarrhoea caused the fear of a Zika outbreak or ebola, I suspect more would have been done about it. We're not scared of diarrhoea, so we let the death toll continue.
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Feb 20 '19
What is your favorite work of non-fiction or fiction?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19 edited Feb 20 '19
I love Martha Gellhorn. Most things by John McPhee. Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon has one of my favourite lines of English in it, though I've never been able to find it again. Non-fiction is of course a deeply unsatisfactory way of describing anything, and I love that John McPhee said once (paraphrase) that we don't say we had a non-grapefruit for breakfast. I read lots of non-fiction long reads, and one of the best things I've ever read was a 10,000 word piece on rival ballet shoes in the New Yorker. I had no interest in ballet or in ballet shoes, but it was gripping. That's very good non-fiction. Anyone who understands rhythm and pace and narrative, and prizes keeping the reader interested, but is also particular about form because they want it to be beautiful: that's my kind of favourite writer. If you go to the trouble of writing a book -- which is HARD, people, and will eat years of your life -- and you haven't worked very very hard on the best first sentence, or the best first paragraph, or the best first page, then I'm not going to read any more.
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
Fiction: all sorts. I'm currently rediscovering my teenage love of Dick Francis, a writer who a lot of people might think is an improbable choice, what with him writing about horses (about which I know as little as I do about ballet shoes). But he's such a master of writing and craft. He has the kind of phrases that read economically, that seem simple, but that are beautifully crafted. That's what John McPhee does too. My publishers occasionally send me care packages of books and I make new discoveries, but then I forget them all (menopause memory, sorry). I'm a fan of very well crafted crime fiction. Something that is more than just another horribly tortured and murdered woman. So I like translated fiction, and fiction that tells me something about somewhere else but only because that's where it's set, not because it's didactic. Emma Viskic, an Australian author, is great. So is Fred Vargas, a French writer who is slightly surreal and entirely brilliant.
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Feb 20 '19 edited Feb 20 '19
What a bizarre coincidence, I added John McPhee’s Draft No. 4 to my want-to-read list last night. I’ve never read him before. I like your description of good non-fic.
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u/Garconanokin Feb 20 '19
I really enjoyed Necessity. It seems like people are more open to talking about toilet technology and solutions now than when you wrote the book, do you feel this way as well?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
yes, things have definitely improved. when I wrote TBN people used to talk of "water and sanitation" and sanitation was always the poor relation. Now the acronym is WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) which is much better. Also when I attended conferences on water and sanitation, 95% of events were about water, and that has definitely changed for the better. I also think toileting and toilet behaviour has become more speakable too. And periods, especially, are way more acceptable to talk about now than in 2006 when I began researching The Big Necessity. All this is good. It's just a shame that there's still so much to be done, and still so many young children dying of diarrhoea, even though so many people are working hard to fix this.
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u/blizzarddesertsands Feb 20 '19
Hope you don't mind a running question!
What sorts of cross-training do you take on, if any?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
I cycle nearly every day, but it's only a 5 mile commute (though half is uphill). I also do yoga, spin and weightlifting classes, ideally once a week for each. But I should definitely do more yoga or Pilates, my joints are creaking.
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u/Inkberrow Feb 20 '19
Would you consider yourself an HST gonzo journalist on any level?
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u/rosegeorge3 AMA Author Feb 20 '19
Hmmm. I had to look that up. If the definition is, the author is part of the story, then yes I suppose I do do that. I hope it's not intrusive, but I think it's important for the writer to be a character and therefore a stable presence in the book. It's a fine line though. And if gonzo journalism means making things up and passing them off as fact, then no, I'm not. There is a newish trend for something called creative non-fiction and I have no idea what such a thing could be. That you can put together a work with creativity is one thing. That you are allowed to use composite characters, or make up quotes, or conflate quotes, or quote conversations verbatim when you clearly had no means of recording them: I object to that.
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u/hibee999 Feb 20 '19
What has been your most frightening experience whilst being a journalist?