We both adore books (we each read about one a week), greasy french fries, bad movies, shopping at Target and strong cocktails. We clicked immediately professionally, and we also both experienced that uncommon spark you rarely feel in adulthood, that nudge that the two of us could possibly become good friends. Christine was working as an editor at Simon & Schuster, and she acquired my last novel. Making friends who have experienced the world differently than you have is even harder. Making friends (particularly as fully formed adults with a lot of demands on our time) is difficult. Unlike our characters, Christine and I met as adults.
But maybe harder than it once was, considering that Philadelphia is the 13th most segregated big city in America.
In our book, our main characters have been friends since childhood, two girls who grew up in a mixed-race neighborhood - not an impossibility in Philadelphia, where neighborhoods like Germantown and South Philly have long been diverse communities. Maybe those numbers have changed since then, but I doubt it. While our novel deals with some issues that are universal - the difficulty of maintaining friendships as we grow up and change, reluctantly planning a baby shower for a friend, marital drama - having a friend of a different race is still something of a rarity.Ī study from 2014 showed that about 75 percent of white Americans don’t have a close friend of another race. More importantly, they helped us build a stronger, more honest and more open bond. These conversations helped inform some of the conflict in the book. We also found inspiration in our own friendship and the intense and sometimes painful conversations we’ve had over the years.
I am white and Christine is Black, and we relied on both of our experiences and insights to flesh out the main characters.
It’s a tragedy that hits close to home for both women. In the new novel I co-wrote with Christine Pride, We Are Not Like Them, two lifelong friends - one white, one Black - see their relationship upended after a Philadelphia police officer shoots an unarmed Black teenager. Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, co-authors of We Are Not Like Them.
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