Larissa Pham

And so she's so upset by this and angry and humiliated that she decides to reinvent herself as a writer.

And so it becomes very important to her that nobody knows that she failed in this really major way.

And so she moves to New York, she makes new friends, she gets a new job, she starts writing.

And, you know, writing is a form of expression for her, but it's also a way for her to recreate a kind of identity.

And I would hazard that, you know, it's the combined forces of hearing other women's stories and seeing other books and essays and memoirs come out that emboldens Christine to be like, okay, I'm ready.

I'm ready to tell my story, but I'm going to tell it in my way.

And the way she chooses to tell it is still like a very exaggerated and vengeful narrative.

She's still quite angry by the time it comes out.

Yeah, it's really helpful to hear you read it out loud, especially coming off this last question, because you identify this moment where Christine has left painting as this kind of like change in the trajectory of her career.

And a big part of that is that she's unable to separate her talent from the way that Richard, her mentor, perceived her.

And so even though she's gone to this new form, she realizes that this

the same kind of like expectations are placed on her, which is like, you know, the world is still very, it's very image oriented.

It's still a very, quite sexist.

And, you know, as a woman writer, especially as a young woman writer, Christine is realizing that like, you know, if people look at her and they're like, oh, I can brand you a certain way, I can position you a certain way.

You've written about this sexy topic, so I'm going to present you this way.

And she's kind of bristling against that because she's experienced it once before.

And maybe she was a little naive to think that it would be different, but she's kind of running into this issue again.

She's running up against the patriarchy again.

Yeah, this is Christine's reinvention.

She's come to this new medium, which is words, and begins in criticism and she moves into fiction.