Do you have a favorite quote from your novel, The Gilded Years? I thought it was brilliantly written and a truly phenomenal story that needed to be told. I would love to hear your thoughts on some of your best quotes!!

Karin Tanabe Hi May,

Thanks for your question and I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. Anita's story is such a fascinating one. I wasn't familiar with it when I was at Vassar, but when I learned about it in adulthood, I immediately thought it had to be told.

Quotes! I definitely have some favorites. On page 24, the following still sticks out in my mind:

"She could not protest. So she sat, nodded again, and went through the motions she had perfected through so many years of practice. And inside her thin shirtwaist, her heartbeat took off like a deer in the woods."

I like this particular line because it shows early on how practiced Anita is when facing racism. Part of passing was certainly being a great pretender, which she is, but it also shows how much she is impacted by the words of her peers, hence her heart taking off. I also still remember sitting in a library writing this phrase and wanting to find the perfect way to describe Anita's heartbeat. It took a few revisions, but that jolt of a startled deer I think describes it pretty well.

On page 173:

"Negro or not, you've been top of your class again and again. So no, you are not a coward. That school, those people, they are the cowards."

I like this line said by Bessie because it really reminds Anita that she is the brave one, the smart one, and that it's the policies that she has to get around by passing that are wrong.

On page 209, it's a short line, but I like it because it really reminds me of Edith Wharton, whose writing was a big inspiration for me for the New York scenes of the book.

"The faces in New York change, but the last names seldom do."

Thank you for posting!

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