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vivors in her family, and her family
didn't grow up talking about the
Shoah.
"We had a high school unit on
it, and that was about as much as I
knew about it," she recalls.
Her mother, who splits her time
between Long Island and Arizona,
helped to track down some survivors
for her to interview. Picoult is "com-
mitted to accuracy."
To understand the complex
history, she turned to experts,
including Peter Black, senior
historian at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
Eli Rosenbaum, director of strategy
and policy for the Human Rights
and Special Prosecutions Section
of the Department of Justice. (Her
character Leo Stein is based on his
experiences.)
About the survivors, she says, "I
write fiction, and I can't imagine the
real stories they have lived."
She adds, "I am so grateful to
them for sharing their stories, for
trusting me, for allowing me to
braid together their stories to create
Minka."
She explains that she was purpose-
ful in making Sage a non-practicing
Jew, to underscore the more univer-
sal moral responsibility.
"The Holocaust isn't just a Jewish
issue. Six million Jews were killed,
but also five million non-Jews.
There's an unfortunate tendency to
think this is a religious problem. It's
a human rights problem," she says.
"This is not to say that Jews don't
deserve to feel a critically important
part of that history. I'm arguing that
it should be a critically important
part of everyone's history:'
Picoult's own background is
Jewish, but she doesn't identify as
such. She's quick to point out, "I
don't consider myself Jewish. I grew
up with parents who are Jewish.
We celebrate Passover and Easter,
Chanukah and Christmas, for cul-
tural reasons and to spend time with
family. That's our personal choice:'
She adds, "We do everything equally
dismissive:'
Did writing this book change her?
"Not on a religious lever she says.
"It made me realize how lucky I am.
It also recommitted me at a certain
level to something I do try to do
when I write: to deflect hate."
Reflecting on the idea of forgive-
ness, she says, "I don't know what I
would do. I don't know if I would do
what Wiesenthal did. I support his
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Jodi Picoult: Though she is the
daughter of two Jewish parents,
she does not identify as a Jew.
decision. He had to make it.
"I believe there's something to be
said for forgiveness. It allows you
to let go of the hold someone else
has on you. If you can't forgive, they
are still hurting you. If you can, you
have the balance of power?'
She wants her readers to think
and address the hard stuff. "My goal
is not to tell you what to think but to
tell you to think about social issues,"
she says.
Picoult gets about 200 emails a
day. She reads and answers every
one of them and says that it's "very
rare that I get a question that I
haven't answered before?'
One way to annoy her is to call her
a woman's writer?' For one, she says,
47 percent of her correspondence is
from male readers. She's upset by the
way fiction is categorized as literary
or commercial, and that her novels,
like those of many female writers,
are considered to be the latter.
"This is what I know: I'm a really
successful, lucky writer; I write the
best book I can. I want to entertain
people, and I want to educate. I
don't care if you call it literary or
commercial. I just want to write the
story that needs to be told."
After beginning her career on
Wall Street, she worked in textbook
publishing and copywriting, taught
creative writing and then got a mas-
ter's in education from Harvard.
"I still think of myself as a teacher,"
she says. "My classroom is huge:'
"
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April 4 • 2013 45