I fell into To Have and Have More and am so excited to bring you this interview! These questions I had immediately after finishing! If you saw this cover and had questions, then this interview is for you!
To Have and Have More
(Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links. For more information you can look at the Policy page. If you’re uncomfortable with that, know you can look up the book on any of the sites below to avoid the link)
Derrymore Academy, circa 2007, is home to teenagers who have their eyebrows shaped and their sweet sixteens tented. Their first kisses arrive around the same time as their boating licenses and they celebrate getting their braces off with Mediterranean vacations. It is here that Emery Hooper, adopted at birth into the country club set, thrives.
The one blight on her otherwise perfect life? Lilah Chang. The Chinese-American student is the embarrassing epitome of every Asian stereotype Emery despises—and is inexplicably determined to become Emery’s friend.
Lilah is both astounded and hopelessly self-conscious around the casual wealth at Derrymore, where students treat laptops as disposable and weekend spending is limited only by imagination and audacity. Desperate to fit in, she’s fascinated by an Asian girl who is somehow wholly comfortable in a white world.
When Emery’s wealth isn’t enough to protect her from increasing microaggressions, Lilah and Emery develop a complicated friendship that tentatively unites them against the undercurrent of white privilege at their school. As they speed toward graduation and Ivy League applications, Lilah and Emery circle around the truth that still irrevocably separates them: With enough money, actions don’t have consequences.
Find To Have and Have More on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop. org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.
Author Interview
As an adoptee myself, I’d love to hear more about the background and process for the main character in TO HAVE AND HAVE MORE?
Nella Larsen’s Passing was an inspiration for this book because it got me thinking about the ways in which Asian Americans benefit from assimilating, which I’d define as a form of “cultural passing”. Assimilating means you make yourself palatable, you don’t discomfit others by bringing your differences to the fore, you disguise your Asian-ness—and you’re rewarded socially for this behavior. This isn’t isolated to Asians, in general the more distance you put between yourself and your otherness (the more you aspire to whiteness) the more you are rewarded. Proxy whiteness was the phenomenon I wanted to explore and I could’ve made Emery, say, a fourth generation Korean-American but it was much more efficient storytelling to create a circumstance in which the fluency of her proxy whiteness wouldn’t be questioned. Having wealthy white parents immediately convinces you that Emery can “pass” in the private school world and that her peers will “honor” her proxy whiteness. A big part of capital P privilege is that people don’t question or challenge you—they accept the version of you that you choose to present. Money + whiteness = you’re unassailable.
In terms of setting, can you talk about how it was to create that setting and what inspirations you had? I know we often talk about world building with second world fiction, but I’d love to hear about your process for our world!
I had to look up “second world fiction” so thank you for teaching me something! For worlds that people already have an image of (like boarding school), I try to prevent them from defaulting to preconceived notions by relying on extremely granular details. When I write “campus”, it’s easy to conjure a picture of a picturesque Ivy league campus in your mind’s eye (and this is a good referent for the most part) so I tried to make Derrymore feel specific via the time period. I included a lot of fashion from the mid aughts (American Apparel, Joie, Alice + Olivia) as well as music (early Kanye, Maroon 5) to make it feel locked in time. Campuses can be pretty generic (or timeless, depending on your POV) so giving cultural signifiers is how I tried to distinguish the Derrymore campus.
I loved the writing POV you have in TO HAVE AND HAVE MORE, was it always written that way? I know sometimes books may start off in first person and change. What was your process for the book?
TO HAVE AND HAVE MORE has always been in 3rd person but over the course of almost 10 years I’ve done countless rewrites. It has changed in every conceivable way from the original vision I had, which was intellectual coming of age meets love letter to my boarding school meets paean to friendship. The early drafts were very ode-like and had hardly any conflict. My MFA workshops eventually got through to me and I realized if I ever wanted to sell this book I’d have to amp up the drama and make it more entertaining. It also helped that I read Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, which is an incredible low-drama book about friendship (basically, what I had wanted to write) and I realized it will take me to the end of my career (CTS was Stegner’s final book) to reach the level of mastery required to pull off such a quiet, low-key (but extremely powerful) story. When you’re inexperienced you have to rely on more flash and hooks.
One thing I love about the book is how nostalgic it made me feel. I know that some people are against picking and citing specific references or music, but you definitely mentioned some of my favorites. How do you feel about these specific references or this approach?
I think the only reason I’d avoid citing specific references is if I want a story to exist outside of time or reality. Since my book is very much set in the real world, I absolutely wanted accurate references to create a believable atmosphere. I found myself looking up “When did Andre Agassi’s memoir come out” and “prom dress 2010”. I think some people believe that naming brands or celebs of a certain era cheapens writing, which is why the Sia cover of “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” in the 2014 Annie remake angered people so. Sia changed the lyrics from “Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly” to “Your clothes may be Chanel, Gucci” and so-called purists were upset and criticized the “materialism” of Sia’s version. Turns out they didn’t know Beau Brummelly was the Chanel of its day and, lyrically, had the exact same effect as Chanel/Gucci. If people are scared of specific references they’ll really limit what types of literature they read/write.
Speaking of references, can you tell us about the journey to the title and how it came about?
I went through several titles before settling on the final. At one point it was called Show and Tell Girl (I liked this, but it got vetoed). At another, Hooper Rising (my MFA professor came up with this one but it was a bit too triumphant-sounding). To Have and Have More felt appropriate because it hints at the privilege commentary.
About the Author
Sanibel grew up in Princeton and studied Classics at the University of Pennsylvania before getting her MFA at The New School. Her work has appeared in NYmag, ELLE, Air Mail, Literary Hub, and more. She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and is working on a satirical reimagining of the Odyssey from Athena’s POV.