Interview: Jessica Day George

By Rachel Bishop

Jessica Day George, author of several Young Adult fantasy novels and all-around cool chick, agreed to sit down and talk with me about her books, her views of women in fantasy literature, and her hatred of damsels in distress.

Rachel Bishop: Thanks for talking with me today.

Jessica Day George: Always a pleasure!

RB: Your books, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, the “Dragon Slippers” series (Dragon Slippers, and Dragon’s Flight) and the soon-to-be-released Princess of the Midnight Ball center around young female heroines. Why?

JDG: Because if you want the job done right, you need to ask a woman!

Seriously, though, there are two things that irritate me more than anything (in books) (well, in real life too): The first is physically and mentally capable young women sitting there, “Oh, ah, help!” while the guy does something she could have done herself. Sure, the average woman could not defeat a burly male warrior in single combat. But could she sneak into the library at night and find the information they need? YES! If you’re always waiting for a man to save you, when that man doesn’t show you’re going to be in quite a pickle, my dear!

RB: Sadly, that still happens a lot in books and movies. The fleeing woman twisting her ankle and falling… Such a stereotype yet often propagated. I’m totally with you on your first irritant. What’s the second?

JDG: When the girl does save the day, but does so by, essentially, becoming a man. (William Shakespeare, she’s talking to you!) Dressing as a man, short hair, ultra-butch, sometimes even having to conceal her identity and live as a man completely, in order to earn the right to fight her own battles. No. NoNoNoNoNo! There is no reason why a girl who also enjoys high fashion cannot pick up the candlestick and knock the evil wizard unconscious. There is no reason why a woman cannot be a military strategist and still knit as a hobby, or have kids, or enjoy riding off into the sunset with a tall handsome guy on a white horse when the battle is won. So I write my heroines the way I like to think I am: smart, funny, tough, and well-dressed! In short: normal. It isn’t a fluke when a girl saves the day, she isn’t a freak of nature. She’s a heroine, the equal of a hero.

RB:  Perhaps because the words are slightly different (hero and heroine), people sometimes forget that the terms are equal. What characteristics of each do you feel are the most important to convey to your audience?

JDG: I want to show readers that girls can be girls and heroes, too! I want to show these young women as real people: they have feelings, they get sick, they have doubts. But they also have a sense of humor, they overcome the challenges set before them with or without help, they try their best to do the right thing for themselves and their loved ones. I want my heroines to set an example to my readers of what a young woman is capable of. They aren’t perfect, with the right solution to everything and able to save the day without breaking a nail, but they try as hard as they can, and more often than not, your best really IS good enough!

RB: Along those same lines, I love how all of your female leads have a bit of snark to them. For me, that is what really grounds them in their fantasy setting and makes them relatable… Especially Creel in Dragon Slippers and Dragon’s Flight. She is a heroine who can get nervous around a hot guy (which is how I sometimes see myself!). Is it hard to marry the realistic with the fantastic?

JDG: Not to me, anyway. For me, that’s what makes fantasy enjoyable: believable characters in unbelievable situations. That’s why it is so often the young sheepherder who ends up becoming king. We’d all like to see an Average Jane like ourselves rise to the occasion and be fabulously rewarded. A good fantasy should have a main character (at least!) that the reader truly identifies with, so that they are invested in the character’s adventure.

RB:  Without pointing any fingers, do you think there is a lack of good (read: realistic) female role models in fantasy literature?

JDG: It’s getting better, but a couple of years back, right as I was writing Dragon Slippers, there seemed to be an alarming trend in YA fantasy (actually just in YA in general)  where the so-called heroine was so pathologically self-loathing that the books were almost unreadable. It’s normal for someone to have doubts, but when your main girl hates herself to the point where she can’t understand why ANY guy would like her, or why she would be chosen to save the world, and the reader agrees . . . well, that’s not good. I’ve noticed a nice upswing lately, though, in more self-reliant girls, or girls who are at least able to work through their low self-esteem, coming to the fore.

RB: Why do you think this sort of female-self-loathing trend happened in the first place?

JDG: I think that people were focusing on the stereotype too much, of teenage girls having low self-esteem. That or being total, um, “queen bees” to use the more polite term. The women in books seemed to be divided into those two categories: the self-hating losers, and the self-centered brats. I think because, as an adult, when you look back on your life you tend to remember the highs and lows, especially the lows. All you can remember about being seventeen was that you had acne, and practically wanted to wear a mask to school. You don’t remember that you had nice hair. You do remember the snotty girl who had nice hair and nice skin. There was too much focus on these extremes, even in fantasy, where your “ordinary heroine” went from being ordinary to being a flat-out loser, and it became even more unbelievable that she would win her battles. It’s changing now, thank heavens, and we’re getting more of a balance: sure she’s clumsy around boys, but she knows how to do magic, etc.

RB: What authors/books have done right by their young female audience?

JDG: I have always been a huge fan of Robin McKinley. Here are girls rising above their doubts, their personal problems, every time. I adore all her girls! Her newest book, Dragonhaven, had a male protagonist, but he was fully supported by some great young women (and a female dragon!). I just devoured John Marsden’s “Tomorrow When the War Began” series. The narrator is a teenage girl who, along with her friends, engages in guerrilla warfare when Australia is overrun by a foreign nation. She’s a farm girl, so she knows how to survive in the Outback, among other practical skills. She’s amazingly tough, and yet at the same time she wants everything to go back to normal so that her parents can take care of her again. Maureen Johnson’s Devilish is amazing. Also, Patricia Wrede’s female characters are always excellent.

RB:  Tell us a bit about the role of your female characters in your new book Princess of the Midnight Ball.

JDG: It’s based on the Twelve Dancing Princesses fairy tale, so there are a LOT of girls running around! It was a bit tricky keeping them all straight when I first started writing, but eventually individual personalities began to emerge. The oldest, Rose, is our main heroine. For her I thought about what it would be like to be the oldest of twelve girls, mother long dead, trying to raise the other girls and cope with the idea that they might all be condemned to dance in the underworld for the rest of their lives. You would have to be tough, intelligent, but at the same time you would have vulnerabilities. You would have moments where you would want to give up, or to make a run for it and let everyone else take care of themselves. I also had an interesting time writing the youngest two, who are only five and six. The five-year-old thinks it’s all still a game, and loves to go dancing every night. But the six-year-old is more fragile, and essentially on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was very fun thinking about how different personalities would react to their situation, and giving each of the princesses a distinct voice. One of the middle sisters, Poppy, is very rebellious and sarcastic, and I’m currently finishing a sequel entirely about her.

RB:  I. Can’t. Wait.

Jessica Day George earned a BA in Humanities/Comparative Literature from Brigham Young University, where she enjoyed classes in Pottery and Old Norse, and dutifully forced herself to take Algebra and Biology. Originally from Idaho, she now resides in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she, her husband, their young son, and a five pound Maltese named Pippin are all anxiously awaiting the arrival of a baby girl. You can visit her at www.jessicadaygeorge.com.

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

Rachel Bishop, originally from Oregon and currently living in Utah, is a grant writer and consultant for non-profit arts organizations. She hopes to one day renovate an old theatre somewhere and turn it into an art house cinema joint [anyone want to be an investor?]. Rachel has a BA in Theatre and Media Arts and an MFA in Arts Administration. She enjoys movies, writing, photography, chocolate milkshakes, using her label-maker, guacamole, and the Oxford Comma. She has been married for almost seven years to a self- proclaimed Zombie Cinema expert who enjoys the occasional Lego, and is the mother of a 3-year-old Star-Wars freak and a cute little girly-girl who joined the family in January. By the way, it turned out much better for her than it did for Ripley.

Related Stuff: