Checking in With Jennifer Weiner
It’s a Thursday afternoon on Zoom. She’s wearing adorable overalls, and promoting her new book. The novel, The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits, came out in March, and I jumped at the chance to chat—not the least because my own novel, The Singer Sisters, hit shelves just a few months ago, and both books are about Jewish sisters who star together in musical acts.
Both novels delve into sexism in the music world, and flip between two generations of artists. But the stories end up taking quite different directions, proving less that great minds think alike and more that there may actually be infinite permutations within our shared sub-genre: Jewish family saga slash feminist rock and roll novel.
Weiner breaks the ice immediately: “Your first question should be, ‘Who would win in a fight, the Griffin sisters or the Singer sisters?’” I muse on the relative uses of combat boots versus stilettos, because both our books are steeped in their respective eras: The Griffin Sisters toggles between a particular period of cultural overexposure for women sing- ers in the 2000s—think Britney Spears’ years in the spotlight, from triumphs to meltdowns—and singing competitions like American Idol and The Voice. The Singer Sisters directs its own nostalgia at the alt-rock of the ’90s, itself calling back to ’60s folk.
And as a feminist culture junkie who was in my late teens and twenties during the 2000s pop princess era that Weiner focuses on, I devoured The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits in a day. Its titular main characters are Zoe, who longs for glamor and fame—and Cass, whose genius and deep social introversion make the world a complicated place to navigate. Their misunderstandings and rifts are shattering, and require a new generation of girls with guitars to come along before they mend. Weiner and I spoke about Jewish singing icon Cass Elliot, stage names that erase Jewishness, neurodivergence in fiction, and the return of diet culture alongside Ozempic and the rollback of Roe.
It’s early 2025 as the bad news for women keeps rolling in. “We’re in the worst timeline,” Weiner says. “I alternate between just sticking my head in the sand, and then inter- rogating the privilege of doing that.”
She explains that her inspiration for the new novel came from traveling in Alaska, where Cass lives, as well as from her rediscovery of 2000s pop culture with a feminist retrospective lens. But it also came from somewhere much closer to home, she adds: “I have daughters,” she says. “Anything I’m writing about women, pop culture, bodies, comes down to that: I have daughters.”
You’ve written so well about pop culture in your columns, and about families in your novels. What made you want to merge those two together
I was thinking about that era when these girls came through the Disney machine—Jessica Simpson, Britney, Christina. I was interested in complicated questions about authentic vs. manufactured. Pop culture put all those women through the woodchopper, no matter who they were from or where they were or what they did. Back then the line was, “It’s empowering that Britney wants to dance with a python”—but what was really going on there? To read Britney’s memoir, read her story now… we did those girls dirty. I also went back and read a bunch of Us Weeklys, and People magazines and In Touch, and thought, “This is fucking awful.” But I was consuming it along with everyone else.
I love the moment the sisters decide to go with the stage name Griffin instead of their real name, Grossberg—it felt like a Jewish rite of passage! Tell me about that.
I thought of the most funny Jewish name I could. We have a lot of them in my family—we have Weiner, we have a Slutsky—she’s the only person for whom changing name to Weiner was an upgrade! I wrote it partly because it amuses me, and also there’s this long and deep tradition of “passing,” in a way. Dropping the “Berg.” In America, does it matter how explicitly Jewish you’re allowed to be? Is it like Seinfeld, where everyone knows [it’sJewish-coded], but it’s all subtext? Or are there holidays, rituals, history in the story? I like putting those into my books. I like the way Judaism makes me think about things.
Your two sisters love each other deeply but have an almost insurmountable misunderstanding. What is it about sisters and best friends, and pairs of women, that’s so appealing for those of us who are exploring feminist topics in fiction?
Every sister is a mirror in some ways. You’ve been in the same place, you have the same DNA. It’s like choosing your own adventure—with the gifts you have she didn’t get, the gifts she had that you didn’t get. Usually with sisters there’s lots of love, but an element of competition. The relationship is complicated in the best way for me as a novelist. It’s juicy.
One of the sisters seems like she might be neurodivergent, which you handle with a very light touch—we at Lilith have been talking a lot more about this topic. How did you approach it?
My character wouldn’t have been diagnosed—she would have had to live in the world with her sensitivities. Fame became a way for her to be hiding, masking, on stage where you can’t see anyone. There were a lot of kids in the 70s or 80s, for whom we didn’t have language or understanding of what it meant to not be neurotypical. I was also interested in the family dynamic, in which a family would say to one sibling: You need to take care of this child.
When Cassie retreats from music for a while, there’s a lot of talk about creativity being a gift and whether or not it’s wasted if you don’t share it. What are your thoughts on that?
I am really interested in the question of gifts and obligations, if you have the ability to do something. With Judaism we are called to repair the broken world. There is something problematic about Cassie having all this talent and not sharing it in some way, and yet it hurts her to be in the world! When she starts singing for some senior citizens in Alaska, I was thinking maybe this is a middle ground for her. There’s a specific population that needs what you can do for them. If having talent means that you’re obligated to share it, does that mean you have to spend your life as a touring musician? No but you don’t want to do nothing.
It’s something everyone who makes art thinks about!
I mean, the world’s on fire—for me, I’m just telling stories, making shit up in my office. Should I be out storming the barricades? If I can write something that will help a reader feel less alone, feel something differently, have a little more compassion, I’ve decided this is what I’m supposed to be doing.
Cass Elliot is a figure your characters mention a lot; can you talk about what she means to you?
“Mama Cass” was a punchline. I’ve been thinking a lot about erasure around her story—Jewish erasure, plus size erasure. We believed as a culture there was only one way for a woman to look. I want to take Cass, and Carnie Wilson, and Ann Wilson of Heart, and any woman erased, moved to the side, not shown in the video, I want to give them their moment in the spotlight. I want to say, “This is a way you can be beautiful.”
The novel touches on sexism and harassment in the industry. Both sisters experience it in different ways. Have we made any progress, or are we in a full backlash with the skinny look being back in style–just as women’s rights are eroding?
There’s still a way that women can’t win. Selena Gomez looked different at the Grammys, and people said she had looked better [when she was] curvier. Then you look back on last year [when she was in fact curvier] and the comments were like, “She’s disgusting.” As long as there is money to be made, this will continue. It’s a frustrating time to be alive. I’m going to be 55, I just want to be done with this. Naomi Wolf said, before she went off the deep end—dieting women are trac- table. Hungry and weak women are what the culture wants. If you’re stuck on the treadmill, you’re not going to meetings and town halls. But it’s important to remember that nobody’s obituary ever ended with “she wore a size two her whole life.” If some- one is telling me I have to look a certain way, that my hair or skin should look like this, it’s worth asking, who makes money from this? And is this a good use of my time, money, and energy?
