How Do You Raise a Son to be the Best Possible Citizen?

One summer, Heidi Julavits, a professor in the Writing Program at the School of the Arts, saw her son silhouetted by the sun and noticed that he was at the threshold of what she called “the end times of childhood.” When did this happen, she asks herself, in her new memoir, Directions to Myself. Who is my son becoming—and what qualifies me to be his guide?

The next four years felt to her like uncharted waters. Rape allegations occurred at Columbia, unleashing questions of justice and accountability, as well as education and prevention. Julavits wondered how to prepare her son to be the best possible citizen of the world he was about to enter—and what she must learn about herself to responsibly steer him.

In the book, she looks back to her childhood in Maine, where she and her family often navigated the tricky coastline in a small boat, relying on a decades-old nautical guide, and conducts an intellectual navigation of the self. Throughout, she intertwines her internal analysis with an exploration of what it means to raise a child in a time full of contradictions and moral complexity.

Columbia News caught up with Julavits to ask her about Directions to Myself, along with her reading habits and her summer plans.

Why did you write this book now? 

“Now” feels like a strange time designation for this book, given it took seven years to write. The idea began to percolate about nine years ago, while Emma Sulkowicz was performing her Columbia thesis project, “Carry That Weight.” In the wake of the conversations it inspired (about consent, institutional oversight, education, etc.), I was talking, jokingly and not, with some people in my department about raising sons who wouldn’t grow up to commit sexual assault. We wanted a guide, a manual. I foolishly thought I might try to write one.

The original title of this book was “How to Raise a Rapist.” It was intended as a polemic, about the lack of any guidance, or how the only guidance seemed to point in the direction of criminality. Then Trump happened, and the Me Too movement happened, and the ideas I was mulling over were being more widely mulled over by the culture. I still didn’t have any answer to my original question, but I changed tacks, because I wanted to approach my uncertainty from a more personal, interrogative place. There are no grand proclamations. There are no answers. But there is process. This is a process book. 

Do you think raising children now is more fraught than it was when you were growing up?

No. There’s a lot more openness, acknowledgement, self-reflection, and support. You are less likely to be a naive participant in perpetuating something you don’t agree with. 

Describe your ideal reading conditions (when, where, what, how). 

In the sauna at Columbia’s Dodge Fitness Center. It is the only place where nothing can disturb me, and I can lock into a book without any distractions. Unfortunately, most books are glued together, and after many stress tests I can report—contemporary book glue will not survive 30 minutes in a sauna. The pages fall out. My books all look like file folders stuffed full of wavy papers. 

What is the best book you ever received as a gift, and why?

I’d like to invert this question: What is the book I most often give as a gift? My favorite book to give others is Moving Heavy Things by Jan Adkins. As the promotional copy says, “This book presents the tools and basic procedures to multiply strength and ease burdens.” It also promises “a creatively lazy hotbed of simple dodges.” Practicality meets ingenuity and philosophy and, yes, laziness.

What's the last great book you read?

Convenience Store Woman, a novel by Sayaka Murata.

Any exciting summer plans?

I am doing my book tour in a small rowing dinghy. 

You're hosting a dinner party. Which three academics/writers, dead or alive, would you invite, and why?

I know this seems like a creatively lazy dodge, but it is genuinely how I feel. I don’t want to host the past or the present. My dream hosting situation would include academics/writers who are not born yet; I’d like a person born in 2100; one in 2200; one in 2300.