Charla Cole and Michael Cole

Recorded November 23, 2019 Archived December 11, 2019 21:28 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: cte000209

Description

Michael (31) talks with Charla (30) about her recently published memoir, poverty, and radical honesty.

Participants

  • Charla Cole
  • Michael Cole

Recording Locations

The Fledge

Partnership Type

Outreach

Transcript

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00:00 Hi everyone. My name is Michael Cole. I am 31 years old. I am currently at the fledge in Lansing, Michigan on November 23rd 2019 and I'm sitting here with my wife and business partner, Halliburton.

00:14 My name is Charlie Weber. Cole. I'm 30 years old. I'm at the fledge in Lansing, Michigan.

00:22 I November 23rd 2019 and I'm here with my husband life coach and editor.

00:32 Okay. Well, thank you Charlotte for sitting down with me here today and congratulations on the release of your new book Memoirs of a venture novelist. We're very excited to delve into that today and talk about some of the behind-the-scenes and thinking process that went into your Memoir. So let's just jump right in. The first question I have for you is what was your main impetus or driving force for writing this book? My mom is a single parent we struggled a lot and when I think my mom instilled in me is that she wanted me to go to college and to kind of do her life a live my life a little bit differently than hers. She had her first child at 17.

01:19 And she struggled a lot. So I went off to college and I ended up not just completing a bachelor's degree, but I went on to finish my Master's and then start a PhD and I always wanted to be a writer but one thing I realized very quickly is that writing for academic audience is very different than writing for regular people and I'm a I'm a Storyteller at heart. I have my baby here with me. So if you hear that, that's what that's eating is that I want regular people on my friends and family to read my my stories and understand kind of where I'm coming from because I have lived a very unconventional life and it's hard for them. Sometimes to understand where I'm coming from and first-year first-time college students often feel like they don't belong in either settings either in Academia and then back at home. They feel like they

02:19 No longer communicate the language that uses is different. So this this book really is a dedication to my family and friends so that I can tell them my story in a way that they can consume.

02:32 What's interesting I was thinking about as I read through the book you're writing revealed. Very intimate details of your past. Some of which could possibly be considered embarrassing. So how concerned were you about the perceptions of your readers particularly your your family and your friends.

02:49 I'm not going to lie. I was pretty concerned. There are many things in the book that people will find kind of embarrassing or they might change the price changes the way a lot of people will look at me in the future. But I really believe in authenticity and telling your truth and that everyone has something to teach from what they've learned in their life experiences. So even the mistakes that I've made by I think it's important to share those and also make other people feel comfortable about sharing their own cuz we all have something to bring to the table. So yes, it's embarrassing but I'm I'm willing to kind of bear bear my soul for the for the benefit of of sharing those stories. Were there any particular stories as you're writing them that that stand out to you as you know kind of going back and forth whether or not you actually wanted to include the book cuz I know you are a proponent of of radical honesty.

03:49 But again, as you get closer and closer to the release date of your Memoir, I'm sure I could get very scary thinking about how others might precede this. So so we're there any stories that that you could think of that were particularly kind of jarring for you. Well, the subtitle of the book is one woman's guide to travel sex and culture. So there is a lot of discussion and kind of critique about gender and sexuality and sex not just here in the United States but globally is a part of the book I'd travel to 37 countries. So I had conversations and intimate relationships with people and I was a little worried at first to kind of talk about those and really be real with the number of partners that I've been with in my life diamond.

04:39 Also, you know the things that I've kind of had to do to make sure that I could support myself through college. They were always what people would would agree that they would do. And so I really push people out of their comfort zone with this book and I and I

04:56 I think that it's important particularly as a woman in the 21st century to kind of talk about these differences in these cultural expectations that are all forced upon us, but are very different globally.

05:10 And how did you go about selecting which stories you would include? Cuz obviously the source material is is quite vast. You're you're now 30 years old and you have a lot of experience researcher offer. I'm so what was your process in terms of whittling this down into a compelling narrative?

05:26 So unless you read the entire book, you don't really see the overarching theme is this discussion about climate change migration and kind of political commentary that I go on and discuss u.s. Foreign policy and I seen the impacts in real life face to face of the result of some of their actions as a country abroad and so I tried to focus in on those experiences there were so many other experiences that I like would have liked to have included. I spent some time in Belize and in Brazil and there was a lot of discussion on colorism and raced that I would have liked to have more got into you. I wish I do a little bit in the book, but there there's a lot more to tell there and I wanted the book not just to kind of be a retelling of my life, but I do

06:26 Real story so I at least think when you read the book that you read it as someone else telling you a story but it has a beginning and end it has antagonist and it has kind of an overarching theme of of love and understanding and then kind of the global process of of what's going on in the world today. Of course, I know your husband but you mentioned, you know, you had an opportunity to see some of the negative aspects of you and us foreign-policy abroad. Can you speak a little bit more to that? So I did conducted research in Liberia, right? Right one in Boulder was happening and it was interesting to me to see the impact of International Development and libraries the 4th poorest country in the world and they get about 2.4 billion dollars a year and international Aid and they have for several decades.

07:26 Without much impact and because it's a donor darling as we call in the international 8 Community. It has a lot of foreign workers their humanitarian, but also people in the diamond trade in the oil business in the rubber business and they all kind of

07:43 Have relationships with each other in a really bizarre way and having those those people there really raises the prices of housing of a price of food of beer care of everything and it's actually pricing the local community out. So that was a very interesting thing to see in real life and how you know, we tell people that we're helping them and it made me question whether or not we really are. I also work for the UN in the West Bank during the Gaza war and I think Israel the israel-palestine dispute is something that it'll be always see in the media and the abstract but nobody really knows too much about it. I mean unless you're American and Jewish or the American Israeli are American Palestinian you like you don't have the same connection there and so living there and seeing the bombings and then the terrorist attack.

08:43 Sex and the checkpoints in the incursions and it it opened my eyes to how complex that conflict actually is much more than even we think it is. We do you like to compartmentalize it into just a religious War but it's a lot more than that. It's all about making money and it's about controlling assets and natural resources and both Israeli and Palestinian higher Society are benefiting financially by the conflict and so it's not really within their interest on either side to end it and it's usually the people in poverty who are impacted the most I also

09:22 Went to Vietnam and went to the Vietnam Museum and the impact of the war there continues to present day in a way that I don't think it really impacts Americans lives children are still being born with deformities because of Agent Orange and you see it in the streets and you see people in Cambodia in that region. Also, we're missing limbs. No thousands of people are still impacted by mines and can't go out into the forest. And so that reduces the amount of agricultural land that's available to them and I really think that we as a country need to connect closer to our history and the things that we've done in the past because they're not abstract for everyone else that you mentioned. Some of the medicines of this book are, you know, climate change Refugee crisis on the forces of globalization. I'm a loser very very large large issues. So

10:22 What would you want your readers on an individual level to take away?