What’s Better Than Summer in Sicily?
Author Jo Piazza on making it in a man’s world, equal partnership, and bringing Sicily vibes home
This summer, I plan to have a lil fun experimenting with some collaborations, cross-posts, and interviews that are slightly out of my center lane. Sadly, I’m not spending my summer in Sicily, but a good consolation prize is sharing my conversation with author
, who wrote, in my opinion, THE beach read of the summer. The Sicilian Inheritance is part murder-mystery caper, part travelogue/love letter to Sicily, part historical drama, and part feminist commentary. Plus mouth-watering food scenes! Plus lusty romance! You’ll plow quickly through this book and thank me later. Do yourself a favor, and buy a copy, stat.I’ve known Jo for a couple of years. We connected over our podcasts that featured new ways to talk about motherhood. I was making the Double Shift, and she was making the first season of Under The Influence, a fantastic deep dive into all of the social and cultural implications of mom influencers on social media. I highly recommend it if you haven’t listened. Jo is a prolific media Renaissance woman, with more books and podcasts than I can even list here. But check out The Sicilian Inheritance Podcast, it traces her own family’s story that served as some of the inspiration for the novel but is very much its own thing and contains no spoilers of the book.
Jo and I had a great time chatting, so if you are interested in hearing the extended audio of our conversation, including her nuanced thoughts on social media and why she sees it as necessary for her career, support my work by becoming a member. One of your perks is an audio version of this newsletter.
Onto the interview!
Katherine Goldstein: So The Sicilian Inheritance has two plot lines, one set in the present day, one in early 20th century Sicily. And so both of the women, the present-day protagonist, Sara Marsala, and her great grandmother, Serafina are both trying to operate and find success, happiness, and fulfillment in a man's world.
To me, that is one of the strongest themes of the book. So I am so curious, how much of this theme comes up for you in your own life and career?
Jo Piazza: Constantly. I'm so glad you picked up on it because it is one of the biggest themes in the book. I started out in journalism in the early 2000s, it was very much a male-dominated newsroom. I was first an intern at the New York Times. It was me and three dudes. And then I was at the New York Daily News. It was still a time when it was like old white men editors in their white short-sleeved button-down shirts with their undershirts underneath.
Sometimes still smoking cigarettes in their office. I was on the gossip column, and they were constantly sending me out on assignments where I would be put into a bikini.
Katherine Goldstein: What?
Jo Piazza: Yes. I was put into a bikini, or once I was actually wearing underwear walking up 11th Avenue. And I've got to say, I persevered through it. It was a pain in the ass workplace and it just made me want to work my ass off harder. But it is such a classic example of being a woman in a man's world. If you are ambitious and you have agency over your own life and you want things, it is very hard. And that's why I wanted to put [these themes] in the book.
Katherine Goldstein: The specific circumstances of the great-grandmother and protagonist are totally different but we are still fighting different battles around agency and how we view women's work and their power. Some of those hurdles haven't changed in a hundred years.
Jo Piazza: They haven't changed in a hundred years. People ask me a lot, ‘Who do you think has it easier, Sara or Serafina?’ And I think a lot of times they think the obvious answer is going to be Sara. She's a modern woman, she can run her own business. But I think that Serafina has it easier because she has a community of women who support her and she has a village to help take care of her. Sara does not have that. And it's very purposeful that she doesn't have that because I also think that we are a generation of women who have lost our village. We've lost our support networks and we often move very far away from family and friends and our community is fraying. So I think Serafina does have it easier because she has these women to support her.
Katherine Goldstein: I love your Substack because I feel like it's very relatable and conversational and makes me feel like I'm getting to know you better when I read it. But if I listed your accomplishments, you have these hit podcasts, you have bestselling books, you have three young kids, like you totally actually seem like the sort of person that has it all together.
And you're a very successful media lady. So if we were going to look behind a photo of you looking fabulous on your book tour what would we see that's not the magazine version of your life?
Jo Piazza: Yeah. I will preface this with one thing. I'm super happy with how my life is right now. And I think it's also important to acknowledge that because as women, we beat ourselves up a lot, like way more than we should. And we don't enjoy the good moments nearly enough. If 34 year old, single, in New York, not super happy in my career, convinced I was gonna be the only one of my friends not to get married and have kids, saw me now, she'd be like, ‘fuck, girl, you're doing great.’ And so I'd really like to acknowledge that I love my husband, I have three healthy kids who are pretty awesome... they're a lot, but pretty awesome. My book was a raging success. And it was a raging success because I did almost all of the publicity and marketing for it. So I'm enjoying this moment right now.
That said, I'm tired. I gained 10 pounds on the book tour, which doesn't seem like a lot, but my body's uncomfortable. Because I have been working so much and I'm not good at making myself slow down during the day when I have to work at night. I do a book event almost every night these days and I haven't been taking care of my body, and my sleep's not the best. I'm exhausted and definitely overworked because I feel like I'm doing 15 different jobs. I still have consulting jobs in addition to my writing books and making the podcasts, I make the podcasts all by myself now because there is less money than ever coming in from making podcasts. That said, I'm comfortable. I'm not complaining about that. My husband is out of work and so we did lose our health insurance because he was the one that had the steady job and the health insurance. So we're now paying a fortune for health insurance and he's still trying to figure out what he's going to do next. That's a tricky thing for any couple and creates strange power imbalances that require lots and lots of uncomfortable conversations on a very regular basis.
Those are the things that are going on, just below the surface. When I say that I gained 10 pounds, which is not the biggest of deals, and I don't really care what my body looks like anymore, but I do have this gene for muscular dystrophy which struck my dad pretty hard starting around now, and so I can't carry extra weight.
I also need to keep my muscles like, in top-notch condition. And so the fact that I've slacked on my health stuff I can feel it. My body doesn't feel good. And I think that's part of the trade off of I'm running around and I have a lot of friends to support me and stuff, but I think we live in this society too, where I always thought that I would have one job.
I thought I would work for a newspaper or a magazine, and then maybe once every five years, I'd write a book. I didn't think I'd have really good benefits and like retirement plans and like I am doing 10 jobs right now, like so many jobs and that's exhausting. But I also just think it's the general precarity of the world right now.
Katherine Goldstein: Totally. I hear you. I have three official jobs.
Jo Piazza: I get asked at every book event that I do, ‘how do I do it?’ I have three kids, right? And the first thing that I say is, ‘I have full time child care.’ We pay for full time child care. Our child care we have an au pair, and we need much more flexible kind of coverage. But you know our caregiver lives in the house with us.
My mom lives 40 minutes away and is here all the time. It's been nine years of trial and error for [my husband and I] to be equal partners, but I think we are there. I have support and I don't know how anyone does it without support. And I talked to so many women whose husbands are not equal partners.
I'm like, ‘I would fucking leave at this point.’ If my husband was not making doctor's appointments or didn't take my kids to school in the morning… I would walk away.
Katherine Goldstein: Yeah I feel like equal partnership is a huge focus of my marriage. There are some like battles that aren't worth fighting or conversations that aren't worth having and like, this is absolutely a number one conversation worth having. And it's also a process. It’s not like, you have an equal partnership and everything is set for your whole life, it's an ongoing discussion.
Jo Piazza: Definitely an ongoing conversation. What does it look like when I'm in book mode? Because actually things aren't equal right now. I need him to do more things than I do around the house. I'm a person who actually needs so much sleep. I don't function when I don't have sleep.
And I need him to just get up in the morning and get the kids out and maybe let me sleep till nine. Because I've been out at an event till ten o'clock. And I'm really tired. I'm doing more “work outside the home” right now than he is, because I don't really have a choice.
Katherine Goldstein: My last question for you is since I will be spending almost all of my summer in Durham, North Carolina, which is very hot and humid, it is not exotic and it's not like Sicily at all. What should I do to bring Sicily into my life?
Jo Piazza: I think about this a lot too because we are actually not traveling far this summer. [My youngest] Eliza is 19 months old. And I don't want to be on a plane with her. So we will be close to home in Philly and in New York. I'm trying to, this is a very Italian thing, and I think it's also so important, I'm not eating lunch at my computer. I am getting up, I'm having lunch with a friend, or I'm making myself something nice for lunch, and I'm going to read a book while I'm having lunch. I think that it's stupid that it feels decadent. I'm shutting off my computer. We're doing nice meals, and we're doing long meals with friends.
It really is all about the eating and the socializing, and making that kind of space. We're also doing a lot of music in our house. I'm trying anytime that we're together in a space together, we're putting on music and having dance parties and also being outside. We're in a city and I'm like, we should take advantage of it. So I'm like, let's meet in the square in our neighborhood with all of our neighbors, which is a very Italian communal thing to do. You walk through these towns during the day and you think that there has been a zombie apocalypse in Sicily because it's hot and they shut the shutters and it looks like no one lives there.
And then all of a sudden it's seven o'clock and all ages are in that square, running around and eating and drinking and spending time together. I'm trying to do more and more of that with my friends here.
Katherine Goldstein: I love that. It’s about more of a mindset and a sort of experience that we can bring this culture to our lives today.
All right y’all! Get your Sicilian Inheritance copies, and enjoy some summer reading!
Member Hangout: Surviving Summer
Join us July 1 at 1PM EST
My two recent newsletters on How Other Countries Handle Summer and my parody of a camp director email are my most-read and most-commented newsletters ever. Y’all have a lot to say, so let’s say it to each other at a hangout!
Come join other Double Shifters as we:
Do some light bitching about the ridiculous absurdity of summer schedules, logistics, costs, etc.
Talk about summer realities in the context of equal partnership or how you manage challenges without a partner
Share personal and community solutions you know about to summer woes
Brainstorm about ways to opt-out of the summer status quo
These members-only hangouts are always a ton of fun. I’ve been doing this for over two years, and every time, I’m amazed by the thoughtfulness and insight of our community. I leave feeling energized and inspired. If you’d like in on this fun, become a member. It starts at $7/mo and is a crucial income for me to do this work while supporting my family.
It’s hot and humid here all summer too and we’ve been doing more outside in the evenings too, it does feel very European!