Happy Tuesday everyone!! We are delighted to be interviewing Jennifer Givhan, whose new book “River Woman, River Demon” releases today! If you are looking for a book to read for the Hispanic Heritage Month, look no further!! Hi Jennifer! Thanks so much for taking the time to do this! We are delighted to host you in our blog! What inspired you to write this story? Several events from my personal and familial turmoil eventually morphed into this story, including an accusation against my husband, a Black man; this charge, although dropped, shook our relationship to its core. It’s also inspired by early motherhood, during which I suffered severe post-partum depression that bordered on post-partum psychosis at times, but there is such a stigma against mental illness and such a paucity of awareness and resources for mothers struggling through these issues that I was terrified to talk about my experiences for fear of repercussions or outside intervention. This filled me with shame and dread; I felt isolated and alone, disenfranchised and disempowered, much like Eva at the onset of RIVER WOMAN, RIVER DEMON. Now, I am an advocate for and write with vulnerability about protagonists with mental illnesses because it’s vital to break the stigma, especially for folks of color. One surprising thing that helped was reading dark psychological thrillers because I saw women going through painful, difficult situations and sometimes making terrible decisions, yet speaking with such candor. So-called unlikeable women. Bad mothers. I soaked them in; dozens of psychological thrillers as, somehow, I knew I wasn’t alone and that having dark thoughts and demons doesn’t make us dark or terrible. It just makes us human. It just makes us alive. But I kept noticing that the protagonists were white women, often affluent, often in a major city, often on …
