THE THREE with Olivia Campbell

An interview, a photo story, and Pop-Up Questions

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Olivia Campbell is the author of the New York Times Bestseller WOMEN IN WHITE COATS: HOW THE FIRST WOMEN DOCTORS CHANGED THE WORLD OF MEDICINE. Her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Magazine/The Cut, HISTORY, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Aeon, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, Literary Hub, and Atlas Obscura, among others.

POP-UP QUESTIONS

The writer picks five out of ten pop-up questions and answers them.

What book do you wish you could read again for the first time and why?

I'm gonna go with one I just read recently: THE CITY WE BECAME by N.K. Jemisin. My mother-in-law pressed it into my hands and said I MUST read it. It took my breath away and I, in turn, pressed it into my husband's hands. It was so inventive and so beautiful on both a big-picture story level and a sentence-level prose level. I seriously cannot wait for the next book in the series.

What is a quote that has endured in your mind?

As a teen hopeless romantic, I dedicated myself to memorizing various Shakespeare sonnets and plays. (Sparked by a local theatre troupe performing scenes from Romeo and Juliet at my middle school.) Though not exactly romantic, Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy still lives rent-free in my head: "to die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come."

What occupies your mind most often on being a woman in America?

Honestly, where to begin? I hate that we have to make so many extra mental calculations when considering our safety. I hate the way we treat mothers in this country: revering them in theory yet not supporting them in practice. As someone who writes about women's history it's sort of disheartening to see how little has changed in the last few hundred years, and how in many ways we are going backward. Our Christofascist patriarchal capitalist society chews women up and spits them out. We are not considered equally human, but merely vessels: for men's pleasure, for reproduction, for emotional and manual labor. Being a woman in America is dangerous, period.

What is your favorite bit of writer lore or (not harmful) gossip? 

I found a lot of fun tidbits while researching an article on how mother-writers get shit done:  I jammed that piece full of some of my fave writer anecdotes: Maxine Hong Kingston distracting her kids with marshmallows, neighbors sending home Shirley Jackson's kids who'd wandered off while she was writing. 

What books comfort you?

My books themselves, as physical objects and as a collection, truly bring me comfort and joy. It was after becoming a published author that I rediscovered my passion for reading. I realized I'd spent a decade reading as a writer, mostly within my own genre of nonfiction science and nature writing. Once my first book was published, I finally had the money to buy books and the time to read since my three kids were all school-aged. I've been voraciously collecting and reading ever since--mostly fiction: thrillers, mysteries, fantasy--remembering why I loved reading as a kid. Reading for fun, not for work.

PHOTO ROLL STORY

The writer picks a photo from her phone and tells us about it.

When my youngest son was 2, he began this habit of taking one random thing to bed for his nap. I began taking photos of it because it was so funny and so cute; I didn't want to forget. Here, he cuddles a fat copy of THE PUNISHER my husband had borrowed from the library. I have pics of him asleep with spray bottles, pliers, balls, and all sorts of toys. -Campbell

THE INTERVIEW

The writer answers questions about her life and work.

Huge congratulations on the huge success of WOMEN IN WHITE COATS: HOW THE FIRST WOMEN DOCTORS CHANGED THE WORLD OF MEDICINE! Tell us a little about the nuts and bolts of that book: how did the idea form to write about this subject, what was the central passion, enough to write a whole book about these women, and how was the response when you initially pitched the idea?

I got the idea for this book after reading about two identical riots in two different countries, almost exactly a year apart: one in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and one in Edinburgh, Scotland. Both were caused by male medical students throwing fits when women dared to join them in the classroom. In 1869, male students at the Philadelphia Hospital hurled spitballs, tobacco spit wads, insults, and obscenities at the group of students from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania who came to attend a lecture. Then in Edinburgh, a mob of hundreds threw mud, rotten eggs and produce, and trash at the women students who were trying to enter the school for a co-ed exam. Later, they loosed a sheep inside the exam room.

Seeing what these women endured simply for trying to study medicine made me want to know everything about them: what drove them, what else they endured, what they were like as people, what they hoped to accomplish. I discovered that many of these women wanted to become doctors after experiencing a difficult pregnancy or birth, stillbirth, or infant loss. This made me feel an immediate kinship with them since I nearly died delivering my first son and then experienced terrible postpartum depression. It was this experience that made me switch my journalism focus from arts to women’s health, so I knew exactly how it felt to have such an experience prompt a major shift in your priorities, culminating in newfound career aspirations.  

My original book proposal included many more women, but the first editorial submission round received universal feedback: great idea, narrow the focus. After streamlining it down to be solely about the three women who founded the London School of Medicine for Women, I had a winner: several major publishers showed interest. The personalities and experiences of these three women were so different and they had a lot of disagreements, so it makes for a lively, compelling tale.

You wrote an entire book about how women became doctors and changed medicine, and here we are, Roe Vs. Wade reversed. After so much research on how hard women fought to be recognized, what are your thoughts and feelings on the Roe Vs. Wade decision right now? Any kernels of wisdom about fights like this you learned from the women in your book?

I am just so furious about this unconscionable ruling, especially so given what I know about the history of women’s medicine. During press interviews for my book, I always tried to mention “abortion is healthcare.” It was an incredible opportunity to make such a simple, radical statement publicly; you have to make the most of someone handing you the microphone. Making abortion illegal only kills women; anti-choice policies have never been “pro-life.” I don't want to go backward, but that's where we're headed right now.

During my research I learned about so many fierce, whip-smart women who used science to debunk men’s ridiculous “theories” about female biology. One of the most popular in the Victorian era was that women shouldn’t engage in arduous mental or physical labor, especially during their period, because it will use up all of their life force. Male doctors claimed such exertion would render women feeble-minded and sterile. Such “medical” pronouncements carried even more clout. But Mary Putnam Jacobi wasn’t buying it. She conducted studies to prove that women weren’t any weaker during their period and doing work during this time had no effect. Pathologizing the uterus was—and regrettably continues to be—just another way patriarchy tries to keep women in their place. I’m convinced they’re just jealous of our power to give life.

What are you working on now? Have you had any difficulty writing with the stress of Covid and the state of our country the past years, and if so, what do you tell yourself to keep writing?

Right now, I am in the middle of researching and writing my second book. It’s historical nonfiction again, this time about four women physicists who escape Hitler’s Germany. With not knowing much about physics and not knowing German, this project has proven significantly more challenging than the last book. But I’m up to the challenge!

Writing, and just getting through the day, has been very difficult the past few years; it generally requires a lot of cognitive dissonances. I was deep into editing and fact-checking the first book when COVID hit. To keep going, to rejuvenate my sense of purpose in my work, I reminded myself that these women I was writing about were the reason there were now women doctors waiting at the hospital, why women were now in labs working on vaccines. Someone had to be first, to demand women were capable of more. I was honored to get to tell their stories while history was being made around us. But even still, with three kids home from school, logistically, it was very difficult to actually get work done even when I felt motivated. I prefer living in precedented times. 

Describe your writing space for us, and how you use it?

I’m kind of an at-home nomad. I use a laptop on a lapdesk on the sofa, on my bed, in the recliner. Invariably, there will be a cat or two sleeping on my legs and a stack of research books nearby. I usually have the TV going in the background for noise playing something I’ve seen before or that I don’t care too much about. It’s my version of coffee shop noise that helps me focus. We are currently beginning the process of expanding our house; I’ve already purchased some artwork and found my dream desk for what I hope will be an office space for me.