UK Edition
Small Great Things author Jodi Picoult: 'I was disappointed with the film version of My Sister’s Keeper'
Jodi, 50, is the author of 24 novels, including My Sister’s Keeper, which was adapted into a film starring Cameron Diaz. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and here she shares her favourite reads
I wrote and illustrated my first book, ‘The Lobster That Was Misunderstood’, when I was about five – my mum still has it.
I went on to study creative writing at Princeton University and loved working with real authors. Mary Morris [author of 2015’s award-winning The Jazz Palace] was my mentor – she taught me everything I know.
I’d just had a baby when my first novel was published in 1992 [Songs of the Humpback Whale, about a woman who leaves her emotionally abusive husband]. It felt like giving birth all over again and like my life was coming together. Twenty-four books later, I still feel that sense of joy every time a new one is published.
I was disappointed with the film version of My Sister’s Keeper, my 11th novel, about a girl who sues her parents when she is expected to donate a kidney to her sister. The film-makers changed the ending and, in my opinion, that was a very big mistake.
In 2012, I read a news article about an African-American nurse [Tonya Battle, at Hurley Medical Center in Michigan] who helped to deliver a child. The parents were white supremacists and told her not to touch the baby. I wondered what she’d do if something went wrong – save the baby or follow orders. That was the foundation of my new novel, Small Great Things.
Writing about racism was challenging. As a white woman, I wasn’t sure whether I had the right to do so. I always do a lot of research but I did even more for Small Great Things. I even went to a racial workshop to learn about my own biases. It was very upsetting but made me realise that I could write this story.
Jodi’s life in books
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell The book that made me want to be a writer – I read it when I was 13.
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen I love the spareness of the prose in the passages where Blixen writes about her lover.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald When I was a student at Princeton, I lived in Fitzgerald’s room.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates A painful, visceral look at what it means to be a black man in America. It affected me deeply.
The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch I read this to my youngest daughter, Sammy, every night when she was little.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel One of those rare, wonderful books. When I finished it, I said, ‘Dammit, why didn’t I write that?’
