mona awad explained: bunny, rouge & her dark, cult-like worlds - talk lit done juicy

say hello to our very first talk lit, get hit bonus episode! we had the pleasure of talking to jade from literature done juicy - a podcast all about literature (you guessed it) and its intersection with pop-culture, science, history and so much more.

we took the time to chat a little deeper about the author mona awad and two of her most popular books rouge (you can listen to the talk lit, get hit episode on this one while you’re at it) and bunny (keep an eye on jade’s feed for this). in this episode we discuss MFA writing programs, the occult and of course, the insidious power of a college clique. sounds great, doesn't it bunny? put on your red shoes, slap on your finest snail mucin and join us for our first ever bonus episode!

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join talk lit, get hit podcast for deep dives into the hottest BookTok recommendations, trending contemporary fiction, and literary favourites! each episode features book discussions, spoiler-filled chats, and thoughtful literary analysis of novels everyone is talking about - from viral romance and fantasy to modern classics. whether you’re looking for BookTok book reviews, author interviews, or a virtual book club experience, out podcast is your go-to space for readers who love stories and want to explore them in depth.

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Transcript

Laura 0:00

Hello and welcome to Talk Lit Get Hit, a podcast where we read questionable books recommended to us by social media and talk shit about them.

Eryn 0:07

We're Bridget, Erin and Laura, three friends who haven't mentally progressed since high school, where we bonded over a love of music and books, but mainly Twilight.

Bridget 0:15

Braze yourself for a heady cocktail of somewhat highbrow and incredibly low-brow ramblings, about all the books the internet loves and our journey to figure out why.

Laura 0:23

Hello and welcome to an extra special episode of Talk Lit Get Hit. Today we are talking to Jade from Literature Done Juicy. This is a bit of a collaboration episode where we're talking about the works of the author Mona Award. We've both read books by her, so we did our January episode on Rouge, and one of Jade's April episodes will be on the book Bunny. This is our first collaboration, and I'm extra, extra excited. So say hello.

Jade 0:54

Yeah, hi everyone. As Laura said, my name is Jade. I host the Literature Dun Juicy podcast. I do talk a little bit fast, but you know, you'll grow to love it.

Laura 1:04

So we are enamored already. So I guess there's no better place to start an episode like this than by talking about the author herself. I think Mona Owad is an extremely interesting person, and her life definitely manages to sort of ripple through the themes of her work. Maybe we can begin our discussion there.

Jade 1:25

Yeah, that sounds great. I know her background that she was born in Montreal and she's got a bit of a mixed background as her dad is an Egyptian Muslim and her mother's a French Canadian. So I guess she has a lot of different perspectives in terms of how she was raised and she's been exposed to different cultures, which probably makes her extra interesting.

Bridget 1:48

It's also really reflected in her books. We can see lots of diverse experiences, I think. But at the same time, I really enjoy reading her books because they all sort of had the same flavor of character.

Laura 2:00

And then in terms of her credentials as a writer, she's definitely somebody who's pretty sort of enmeshed in that literary scene. She's worked as a bookseller across various independent bookstores. And I think that would really offer you a unique perspective on what people are reading, what people are looking for and not finding, as well as just sort of general funny observations about the literary world.

Jade 2:24

Yeah, you get to see the reader face to face, and I guess it exposes you to your potential audience or audience in general, and it would give you a better feel about what you want to write about or how you want to write. And I also know that she's been to three different universities. I believe she's been to the University of Edinburgh, and when she was there, she was studying fairy tales and she did a thesis on fear, and she also attended Brown University, and I believe another university in Canada. I'm gonna say Toronto, but don't quote me on that. And then through all of her studies, she's got her Masters of Fine Arts and Creative Writing, which is supposedly a really prestigious uh degree to get outside of Australia because it doesn't really exist in Australia. How to look.

Laura 3:15

Oh, don't speak too soon. Oh, it does. Okay. Tell me more. That is my first degree. I don't think that the degree exists anymore. And I have to say, I don't think it's really prestigious in the same way in Australia, unfortunately. I had so many conversations where I said, Oh, I'm studying fine arts, I'm doing a bachelor of creative writing, and it was always so misunderstood. Once somebody thought I was literally studying a three-year course in calligraphy, um, like what other creative ways of writing are do you do like stencils? What are you talking about? And also with the accent, people always thought I was saying finance. So, I mean, maybe I should move abroad and start to flex a little bit. I could really use the prestige. Be good for your ego.

Jade 4:12

Well, I think you can flex anyway, because if you just put it on your online bios and that kind of thing, anyone international will love it. So true. Yeah. True, true. But I know that Bunny was a satire also on the whole process of getting your MFA. So even though she's got it and it is prestigious, she was critiquing it in Bunny, which is quite interesting.

Laura 4:35

I really enjoyed those scenes. The scenes in Bunny, not to skip super far ahead, but with the kind of creative writing workshops and like the feedback and their dedication to the craft and to the art. I forget the word they use, the process? Definitely rung true. I don't think my course was in any way the same as these kind of New England, like super prestigious fine arts programs, but there was definitely a truth there.

Jade 5:02

And Erin and Bridget, what are your um backgrounds? Did you study anything in terms of literature or I have a degree, a bachelor's degree in education.

Bridget 5:12

I majored in primary education. I work in an intensive English centre, so I teach English to refugee and migrant children. So as part of that, I went back to university and studied a graduate diploma of teaching English to speakers of other languages. So mainly an English teacher at the moment. That's me. Bridget just gave us an amazing linguistics lesson before.

Eryn 5:34

It was so good.

Laura 5:35

We just finished recording our translated fiction episode, and we were talking a bit about dialects, and my eyes were opened.

Eryn 5:42

I have a double bachelor's in law and arts, and my arts major was writing into society, creative writing, journalism, all that kind of stuff.

Jade 5:53

So, did you do workshops similar to what was occurring in Bunny too?

Eryn 5:58

The writing part of my arts degree was more about sampling all the different types of creative writing that you could do, and so less those workshop type scenarios, except when I had to do my thesis for my arts degree, and we had to meet in this room with all these other people who had just done creative writing their whole degree, and they were all like, Yeah, I want to write this explorative piece about sex and gender, and I was like, I cannot write anything.

Jade 6:34

What about you? What was your degree? But I did my Bachelor of Criminology and I minored in literature, so I've always had a keen interest in it. But my main goal at the time was to be a police officer, and I did that. Um, I went into the sex offenses and child abuse investigation team, was there for about six years, and then I just had enough, so I've changed course more into what I'm passionate about, which is yeah, literature and writing.

Eryn 7:01

Very cool.

Jade 7:02

That's so interesting.

Laura 7:03

I love how they all intersect in like quite an interesting way as well, all of these degrees.

Jade 7:09

Mona and a couple of other authors, they're currently suing Chat GPT because they believe that the AI program is essentially eating, like you know, their novels, and then their style of writing and their um type, their prose and everything like that is just being regurgitated so someone could post in chat GPT, write me a story about X, Y, and Z and write it in Mona Award's tone. So that's where the issues come in around copyright. So this started back in about June 2023. So I'm assuming it's still going because if it was settled, it would have said it was settled, or if there was a result, they would have posted that there was a result. But I guess the grey part from what I can see is for instance, when uh there's copyright with music, the patterns are very, very similar, but they change the words, like they change slight things about the song, which makes it no longer copyrighted. So I'm guessing it probably won't be successful because I feel like that's a very similar concept to how music is made. I don't know, maybe you guys know a little bit more about it than I do, but that was just my interpretation.

Eryn 8:20

In America, which I suspect is where the class action's being brought, the ability to use copyrighted works for like fan derivative works, it relies on a few tests like is it um for parody, is it for humor, is it for profit, stuff like that? And so I think the connection between all that and chat GPT will be really interesting because what is the purpose of asking ChatGPT to write something in Mona's voice? Is it just for fun? Is it because you're gonna want to brand it with your own name and sell it? Like that's really, in my opinion, the crux of the issue. What are you doing with it once ChatGPT has mangled it? And then, like, there's also the other element of these authors not providing approval or consent for their works to be put in ChatGPT, but that program by nature consumes without consent anyway. Like it consumes even non-copyrighted things, like my Facebook post to Laura for her birthday, would be discoverable by ChatGPT. So I'm curious to see how that actually lands and see where they draw the line about consent and copyrighted works, both for the written work and even music, because I know it's it's capable of regurgitating copyrighted music.

Laura 9:47

Yeah, I'm with you, Mona. This is a tricky one. I think personally, if I were an author, I'd be particularly on edge about that. So I really understand the angle behind that class action lawsuit. Maybe that is a good segue to start talking about her style. I think it's a very distinctive style, and I understand the want to replicate it because it's so singular to her. I have read almost all of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, which was her first novel, and then we covered Rouge on the podcast, and I've read Bunny, and I know Bridget and Jade have as well. And she just has such a voice and such a way of seeing the world and characterizing her novels that's so particular to her.

Jade 10:38

I think there's a lot of layers to her writing, so she's got different elements from different genres because she's got the gothic, she uses a lot of satire in her work, and then she also uses fairy tales and mythology to address current issues in like popular culture and I guess just current cultural issues. So I think that's what makes her writing so different to a lot of people because she is a mishmash of so many different genres.

Laura 11:07

I think that element of like supernatural and fairy tale and gothic, like you said, is like a really nice through line in her books. I don't know that 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl had that per se, but it definitely has this air of like that same kind of sinister, mysterious undercurrent that I think is very much prevalent in Bunny, and definitely the same is true for Rouge.

Jade 11:36

Can you tell me a little bit more about 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl? Because that's one I haven't actually looked into.

Bridget 11:42

I think it's sort of builders 13 stories throughout the life of someone who has spent her whole life focusing on her weight and not just her, everyone in her life is her best friends, her mother. It's doesn't have that fantastical element to it. It's more realistic. I wouldn't consider it as part of the like fantasy fairy tale suite of works that she has. But the one thread that I think really links them all together is her humour, and it's like a dark humor, it's gritty, it's not obvious to start with. I think she's very funny, and that's my favorite part of her writing. It's like a bit like a click. Like you once you're in, you're in, and you know what the jokes are and you know what she's trying to get at. But on the surface, it's like quite dry and quite boring. But once you dig in and try to think, what's what is she trying to say here? What is she making fun of?

Laura 12:40

I think another thing that ties her works together is that feeling of otherness and being an outsider and like envy and obsession. I think that's very much true for Bunny, and it's certainly true for Rouge as well.

Jade 12:57

Yeah, it seems like it's all about the clicks and all about the popular girls in a way, or the most beautiful girls. It's always got a theme around aesthetics more so than personalities. I guess when you start to get to know the characters though, you can see that they're actually quite nasty, and although there's a cuteness, or there's like like they appear very beautiful inside, they're quite rotten.

Bridget 13:22

Yeah, definitely. And I also think it's interesting because Bunny, especially, you know, the image that she presents to the world is she's cool, she's different, she's alternative, but inside all she really wants is to be with the bunnies, and she wants to be part of that group. And once she's in there, as you just said, she realizes that it's not all it's like cracked up to be, because they're like actually insane, but it's so interesting to see these characters that they sort of pride themselves on the on being different, but at the same time, they want to be like everyone else, and they just don't know how to get there. And I think that's a really relatable thing. If you take away all the fantasy, like weird gothic stuff, it's very human underneath.

Laura 14:07

I had listened to Bunny as an audiobook in about 2020, and I actually didn't really enjoy it, but I reread it in anticipation for this discussion, and I loved it the second time around. I think it might be what you were saying before, Bridget, like that sort of feeling of not being in on the joke and not quite understanding it. For whatever reason, I was ready to get it this time around. And Bunny I found to be so much more emotional, particularly at the ending than I remember it being. And there's this quote, I think, from the Paris Review, I think it was an interview with Mona Award. She's talking about the motivations behind Bunny, and she says, To what degree do loneliness, desire, and fear actually conjure a kind of reality, whether wondrous or horrific? Samantha is a very unreliable narrator. So there's a real tension in whether her experiences of the world are supernatural or the product of her imagination. But we're all unreliable narrators. We're all either inside or outside a moment, and both produce a kind of blindness that then creates an experience of reality. And I love this quote because I think that's something that we were really unclear about with Rouge. We struggled with that kind of fantastical element of like what was real, what was delusion. I saw so many people talking about these books online saying, like, oh um, Samantha and Bunny has schizophrenia, or like Belle in Rouge is having a mental breakdown, like she's lost her mind. And I love that it's kind of up to us whether it's a metaphor or whether it is some sort of magical realism.

Jade 15:47

I guess the same can be said for fairy tales in general, though. Because mythology, I some people would, you know, have some belief that they actually occurred, whereas others would be a bit more cynical. And so I guess that's the beauty of it where she's using these fairy tales as inspiration for her stories, and it is up to the reader to decide whether or not they think it is magical or whether they think it's someone going crazy.

Eryn 16:12

Yeah, and I think this is the element that I really liked in Rouge. I liked that it was writing meant for speculation. You were meant to be always questioning what was happening because the characters were questioning what was happening. We spoke about this in the Rouge episode. For me, the payoff was never there to make me want to read more to enjoy that speculative writing, but I enjoyed it for what it was in Rouge.

Laura 16:40

I find the inspirations of both of these books particularly interesting. In the case of Bunny, I think people describe it as a mix of the craft meets Heathers. I've seen Heathers. Have any of you watched these movies?

Jade 16:54

I've seen The Craft and it was I I loved it as a kid. And I haven't seen Heathers though, but I would like to after looking up the movie for this episode actually. Um The Craft is essentially just about some girls who are witches, and they start together um as all friends. They start using their magic to get boys to love them and to have sex with boys. One of the witches ends up um having sex with uh another one's boyfriend, and then all hell kind of breaks loose. So I guess Bunny is similar to um The Craft in the sense that they're using magic to influence men in a sexual or in a romantic way. So I guess that's where the that kind of influence is, and it's still very clicky. So there were three witches, and then there's one um who is the main character, the protagonist, who comes into the fold and she starts becoming quite like them. But when she realizes what they're actually like, she starts to withdraw, which is again very similar to Bunny.

Laura 17:57

I think Heather's is kind of the same definitely big click mean girls kind of vibes. And then Christian Slater plays this really antagonistic bad boy. And I can't quite remember the ins and outs of it, but I think there's like poison involved, lots of killing of students. I think this is the movie with the gumball scene, right? Gumball, boot of the car. It's really like quite camp, if you will.

Eryn 18:22

I remember really enjoying it. Oh, it's a great musical, and like to set all of that drama to a banging soundtrack. What more do you want?

Bridget 18:30

Inspired. It's also where the Veronicas got their name from. I'm a Veronica. That's amazing.

Jade 18:37

For bunny, because it says that it's um it was voted best horror and it definitely has horror elements. Would you guys think that it falls into that category? Because I feel like it doesn't. I feel like it does have horror elements, but it's more of a satire/slash fantasy. What are your thoughts on that?

Bridget 18:55

I thought it was gory in parts, like especially when they were exploding over the room. But I don't know if I would say horror. I think the location sort of made me feel a bit creeped out. Like the way she was describing New England, like all of the murders and the rapes happening around the campus and on the campus, and all of those things just sort of brought a bit of an unsettling vibe to it. But I don't know if it ever crossed that bridge into like true horror literature.

Laura 19:24

Yeah, I feel exactly the same. And this was kind of something we talked about in the Rouge episode as well. And I would say they're on the same tier in terms of creepiness. I don't read a lot of horror, but this year we're reading 12 different genres, and to kick off the year, we were starting with horror, and Rouge was our choice. Just the same. I would say sinister, but for me the satire, same as you, Jade, the satire wins out.

Jade 19:49

Laura, before you said that you've obviously done workshops in terms of writing and you enjoyed the parts in Bunny that explored those types of things. How would you say that your experience doing a degree like that was similar to how it's portrayed in Bunny?

Laura 20:06

I would say there were some similarities. I think even just something that resonated with me was that scene at the end where the bunnies have all like completely unraveled and they're all seeing Byron, I think somewhat of the names for him were. I loved that. And in that scene where they all kind of have at each other's writing. And I wish I had the quote in front of me, but there's one where one of the bunnies is like talking about how she always felt so self-conscious because she couldn't understand somebody's writing. Like, Kira's so brilliant, Kira's such a genius. I could never match up to her, I could never understand what she's saying, and now I realise you're not saying anything, like you're full of shit. And like I just really was laughing at that scene because I resonated so much with that insecurity of not understanding where someone was heading with their writing, what their metaphor meant. And then also, I guess just in the clickiness of it as well, I don't think it was at all on the degree of the bunnies, but you definitely had those people who were besties and like formed a little group. And when it came time to do that giving feedback, they were always like, I loved it, I love everything you write, you know I'm just obsessed with you, like you can do no wrong. Yeah.

Bridget 21:23

It's like an Instagram comment section, but in real life. That they do. Especially when you're in university or post high school, you're sort of playing at being an adult, you've got all this freedom, but you're still unhinged, and you don't really. Know what's going on, and you're trying to see what everyone else is doing, and if they know what's going on, and you don't want to show that you don't know, but they don't know either, that sort of comes through in overwriting as well.

Eryn 22:11

Yeah, I think it also speaks to like the human experience generally, that even though these are like quite fantastical stories, deep down they are all rooted in quite fundamentally relatable human experiences, which I think is where some of the like horror elements come through because it's turning something so familiar and making it like the worst version of what it could possibly be.

Laura 22:37

There's a really good quote in that same Paris Review article where Mona Awad says there is also just something very not adult about grad school. No matter how old you are when you go, it's a sheltered insular environment that has its own language, its own very particular sense of time and space. And I think it can really reinforce all of the dynamics of teen drama and junior high. So that makes me feel really smart because I feel like we were exactly on the same page as Mona there. That juvenile quality is definitely something we see in the protagonist of Rouge Belle as well. So Rouge is a story about a lonely shop clerk whose mother has unexpectedly died, and sort of before she dies, she started deteriorating, her sanity's kind of going off a cliff, but she's also glowing. And the character of mother has always pushed this obsession with beauty and appearance, and particularly in relation to skin on Belle. Throughout the whole book, there's this really sort of like juvenile yearning for acceptance, I guess, and validation. And to Belle, this validation is so like intrinsically linked to appearance, like it's like you know, self-worth is only exterior.

Jade 24:00

I didn't realise it was after the death of her mother in Rouge, uh, because I believe Mona's mother passed away when she was a little bit younger. So I don't know whether or not Rouge is slightly based upon her own experiences with her mother. Do you guys know much about that?

Bridget 24:18

When we recorded our episode, we did sort of wonder about that because Belle's mother is a white woman, but her father is Egyptian. A lot of her commentary about her experience is of being a child that has darker skin than everyone else, darker skin than her mother. And so what we were wondering while we were recording is how much of this is from personal experience.

Jade 24:43

Yeah, I think it seems like it's a lot because yeah, her mum's French Canadian, so it kind of definitely seems like it rings true into what she experienced.

Laura 24:51

In Rouge, her mother certainly always made a show of parading her around and like, look at my like mysterious, like ethnic daughter. Like, isn't she exotic, yeah, otherworldly? And sort of like, yeah, making her feel other through that experience, whether it was well-intentioned or not. I would be really interested to know more about Mona's dynamic with her mother because it's not a particularly flattering one that's painted in rouge, although I think it ultimately is a very like bittersweet and loving relationship.

Eryn 25:24

It's almost misguided. It's hard as well because Belle in Rouge perceives some of her mum's actions to be like othering her. And then when we spoke in the episode, we talked about how sometimes when she was like, Oh, look at your beautiful bronze skin, it was more to protect her from what the mum was going through with her own beauty standards and insecurities and stuff. In trying to build Belle up, she had also othered her in a way that pushed her further towards the same insecurities that the mother had. So you're absolutely right. It was really bittersweet.

Bridget 26:05

This is also a feature in 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. She has a very fraught relationship with her mother, and once again, that's around body image and the lessons that she has learnt from her mother. We spoke a little bit about this in the Rouge episode, things that we absorb from our parents, especially daughters and mothers. But I also think at the same time, these books have that fairy tale quality, and there's always some like peril or danger, and it seems to be the characters are always saved by the love they have for someone. So in Rouge, she's saved by the love that her mother has for her, and in Bunny, her love of her best friend helps her get out of that situation, and but both books really hit me at the end. There were some really beautiful quotes about friendship, about motherhood and girlhood in general. Both times I read Bunny, I didn't expect to be hit by it, but the second time definitely I was more upset when I read it. It it I don't know, just resonated with me a bit more this time. So it is interesting to see that link between like feeling like an other, but ultimately being saved by your people and the people that you love.

Laura 27:24

Yeah, I would absolutely agree about the endings of Fruge and Bunny. And I think for something that's quite whimsical, unhinged, chaotic tale in both cases, I didn't expect to be sort of hit with emotions at the end. And just like quite a sneaky way.

Bridget 27:40

Like it doesn't make a show of itself, but just kind of reading a sentence and being like, Oh, she was so lonely, or like whatever it is, just oh just little things like dancing in the living room with a friend and sitting on the balcony with the raccoon kings or priests or whatever they were. Yeah, just lovely little things like that.

Laura 28:04

Another interesting tie between the two is definitely the cultish vibes. I think in Bunny it's quite explicitly a cult. Um, Ava even says to Samantha, you realize you're in a cult, right? And they are doing these like pagan things.

Jade 28:22

Yeah, I agree, and that's something that is reflective in academia in general. Like, so in my my Bunny episode, I discuss a little bit further on this, but like the theme for the uh show this season is researchers and academics, and you do find in a lot of universities and a lot of colleges, especially international ones, you do have that elite group in terms of their sororities or the clubs that they're in, and I think Bunny reflects that really, really well and turns that more into a sinister type vibe.

Bridget 29:00

Also, like the conversation between the privileged people. I imagine that the universities and colleges, the people that are in the sororities and the fraternities, are the ones that come from a background of privilege, and that's also a topic she talks a lot about in Bunny, just feeling like she doesn't have enough money, or and it's some anger that she has towards the characters as well.

Laura 29:21

And then in Rouge, we have, I guess, like another interpretation of the meaning cult or the word cult, and it's like this kind of critique of the like fanaticism or like hive mind or kind of cultish behavior around our obsession with like skincare and wellness. And I really found she has a really great way of sort of mocking these things, like whether it is like gently mocking like an MFA program or mocking the skincare and wellness industry without like explicitly spelling it out. I mean, I think in Rouge it's so well illustrated, like whether it's through the protagonist Belle's obsession with this um like skincare influencer called Marva, who is like selling them like you know, CMOS or like snail mucin or whatever other kind of like crazy products that I was not even clear if they were real products that existed or if they actually were made up for this because some of them sounded truly unhinged.

Jade 30:20

They are. My friend she uses the the snail cafe face. Apparently it works very well, but they are real things.

Laura 30:26

Yeah, that's incredible. Korean beauty's got it on lock. They've got the answers. I'd trust them explicitly.

Jade 30:34

I guess what's also similar is people that can afford all of these skincare products are also from an upper class, so it's still a critique on class, which is also similar to the critique of the girls in bunny as well. So it's a recurring theme. I think that's all we've got time for today. Thank you so much, girls, for jumping on and having this discussion with me. Thank you. No worries, it's been so fun. Yeah, definitely. And we'll definitely have to do it in the future.

Eryn 31:04

Yes, and thank you to you because you were the one that suggested this in the first place. So thank you for being brave and asking us to hang out with you. We're too scared to message people.

Jade 31:17

No, I'm a pusher. No.

Laura 31:20

That's a good way to push people. Oh god, are we the clique?

Bridget 31:26

Sorry, I'm gonna go, I gotta go explode some bunnies in my attic. That's the end of our very first collab featuring the lovely Jade from Literature Dum Juicy. Make sure you subscribe to our shows and you can find Jade at literature dumjuicy underscore on Instagram. If you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.get on Instagram and TikTok.