Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Kim Imas, whose novel Beast Mom has its debut on August 29.
Where do you think the idea for Beast Mom came from? Was it prompted by situations you encountered as a Mom of young children?
In part, yes. As a new mom I kept having these moments of shock. I wondered how it was possible I wasn’t already aware of something really impactful, like an unexpected way in which my body was reacting to pregnancy or childbirth, or the fact that daycare and preschool cost a proverbial arm and a leg.
But Beast Mom was also inspired by the events of 2016 and 2017. Firstly, it was inspired by the public discourse around a qualified female presidential candidate and her electoral defeat by of man who bragged about assaulting women, and secondly, by the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein, which ultimately led to a global explosion of the #MeToo movement. All of those things enraged me—and plenty of other women, too—but by the time I was finishing Beast Mom there was already a backlash against #MeToo, which only served to make me even more angry at the way our society talks about, views, and treats women. It all felt so obvious to me, yet people were (and are still) denying that we collectively behave as if women who seek power, and women who have paradigm-challenging stories to tell, are never to be trusted and worse still, we must all go to great lengths to diminish them.
The trope of women becoming monsters has an ancient provenance in Western culture - from the Ancient Greek sea-monster Scylla through to Milton’s Sin - but most were imagined by men. What is different about a woman imagining female metamorphosis?
What a wonderful question, and one I’m still educating myself about. But I will say that on the one hand, when men have imagined women with unusual and powerful abilities, they are often characterized as threatening, “ugly,” and duplicitous. These tend to be one-dimensional and they are coded as bad, I think because we’re talking about women whom men cannot control. Yet on the other hand, men have also created many female superheroes who are literally drawn with the exaggerated physical characteristics that we associate with men’s approval. So to oversimplify things a bit, when it comes to women and supernatural power, male storytellers have given us two extremes: hyper-ugly/monstrous and hyper-attractive/idealized for the male gaze.
I like to think that as a woman who’s been around a few decades, I apply a nuanced, real-world experience to my female characters, and I definitely bring a strong inclination to imbue them with the complications and contradictions innate to real human beings. These women don’t exist to be damned, but they don’t exist to be put on a pedestal, either. They make mistakes and piss men off and don’t always look photo-ready. Yet even when they are, in fact, part-monster, they aren’t without their own sorts of loveliness, honor, and achievement. And I hope this translates to authentic female characters who “ring true” to all who read them.
Beast Mom is also humorous and satirical. Why is that important?
The challenges women face today seem to have been around forever—why the heck hasn’t there been more progress? And why do we doubt women’s stories, or ignore them entirely? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but when I was writing Beast Mom, my gut told me that making people laugh would help ensure that more people give the book a try and then continue reading even when Harry, the protagonist, goes on one of her rants. I figured that regular doses of levity might help these stories of women’s struggles—the stuff that’s harder to swallow—go down more easily, so to speak.
But even prior to Beast Mom, I’m proud to say that my writing style had been described as “wry,” “witty,” and “delightful,” so I think, too, that’s it’s in my nature to infuse my stories with bits of lightness, joy, and observations that will make people smirk or smile. I also come from a family of very funny people, so perhaps I’ve quietly absorbed the rhythm of their banter and the ways they use word play, unexpected juxtapositions, strange sounds, and other means for cracking each other up.
Would you call Beast Mom a feminist book and what does that mean to you?
I absolutely intended Beast Mom to be a feminist book and am eager to promote it as such. Feminism is key to me, and it’s key to this story. I think of it as the idea that women should be both treated equally and have equal opportunities to men. That this is not currently the case for us is a sad indictment of our culture.
It’s also a source of ongoing frustration to me that feminism is so frequently misunderstood and even wilfully misrepresented. Too often, I hear it described—erroneously—as equivalent to man-hating or worse. I hope that any readers who were hesitant to embrace feminism before reading Beast Mom will take away a new appreciation for it once they’re through.
Your first novel, published under a pseudonym, was a Regency Romance, Everything but the Earl. Is it safe to say that it was much more than just a romance?
I’m proud to say that Everything but the Earl is a romance, full-stop. I think it’s important to keep normalizing the fact that romance is a valid genre just like any other. Having said that, when talking to prospective readers, I’ll often mention specific aspects that could help them decide if it’s the right book for them, like the screwball-comedy-type banter and antics, or the elements of a #MeToo story, or the fact that it celebrates women’s friendships. But on the whole, Earl sits squarely in Regency Romance and that is more than fine by me.
What do you want your readers to take away from reading Beast Mom?
I really hope readers enjoy this book on multiple levels, beyond the story itself. I hope readers feel like Harry—the protagonist—is someone they’d like to be friends with. I love being immersed in the worlds created by my own favorite authors, and I hope that’s true for Beast Mom readers.
Also, the process of crafting sentences and paragraphs is particularly enjoyable to me and I take pride in my “smooth prose and witty dialogue” (which is how Publishers Weekly described my first book). I wanted readers to enjoy Harry’s “voice.”
On a more serious note, I’d love it if Beast Mom leads more people to realize that as a society, we don’t listen to women’s stories. I hope it leads more people to begin truly listening to women’s stories. And I hope it helps normalize—no more stigma!—talking about women’s bodies and healthcare needs, even when the conversation is bloody or personal or otherwise uncomfortable for us.
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