J. Courtney Sullivan graduates from chick lit with 'Commencement'

While the tensions and multiple interpretations of 21st-century feminism feel on one level like the heart of “Commencement”, Sullivan sees her characters and their interwoven stories as the nucleus. “When you’re writing a novel, I feel like you can’t approach it and say, this is a novel about feminism, this is a novel about friendship, this is a novel about—I mean, I certainly had bigger ideas, a sort of sketched-out framework, but it was much more ‘What happens when four friends leave college and want to continue being friends, how does that look? How do they do that?’ And so all these other pieces—feminism or Catholicism or sex or whatever, they just enter in because that’s what there is, that’s what I have in my head.”

Sullivan’s skill as a storyteller is just one of many personal connections to her Irish heritage. She mentions that her parents will be “thrilled” about her appearance in Irish America, saying, “I’m from outside of Boston and in Boston people are so passionate about their Irishness … When I was growing up, for example, everybody on our street was Irish. And all the girls did Irish step dancing, it was pre-‘Lord of the Dance,’ it was before anybody knew what gillys were, but we did, and there was such pride among the members of my family and people I grew up with. Every St. Patrick’s Day in my hometown is such a huge thing. You know, it was like Christmas, but in green. So I went to Smith and I remember waking up on St. Patrick’s Day and going out into the hall, and there was like one person wearing green. Nobody was celebrating. I was like, ‘What is this? Aren’t we going to listen to the Clancy Brothers now? What’s happening?’” She enthuses, “My family comes from County Cork. A couple of years ago, my parents and my sister and I went and did the whole Ring of Kerry thing, which was fantastic, and I think we have family in other places scattered around there as well. I love Ireland.”

Celia, one of “Commencement”’s four heroines, also comes from an Irish Catholic background and has drawn comparisons to the author. While Sullivan insists, “There are parts of me and parts of all my friends in each character,” she agrees that Celia’s Irishness has plenty to do with her role as the glue that holds the girls together past college graduation and well into the beginnings of their adult lives. “My first week at Smith, I had made a plan to go to a movie with some girl on my hall, and I just felt like I didn’t want anyone else to be left out. I just dreaded the thought of being left out in this brand new group of women and so by the time this girl had gotten her coat on, I had invited twenty more people. And she was kind of like, why? But I just wanted everyone to feel included. I think you’re right, I think it probably does come partly from being Irish, and coming from, as Celia does, and as I do, a very traditional, big Irish Catholic family. I’ve been doing readings lately and reading from Celia’s first chapter, the first chapter of the book, and she says all these things about how she just wanted to have a weekend to herself, where she wasn’t obliged to do some family thing. But then when she gets to Smith she’s like, ‘So what do I do now?’ And I definitely had that as well when I grew up—and still, my family in Boston gets together every single weekend for some sort of communion or birthday party or whatever. They go to every BC baseball game. It’s a community unto itself. So I think when you come from a background like that you’re looking for community everywhere. Also, I’m the oldest in my family, nine years older than my sister but also older than all of our cousins, who are even younger than she is. So I definitely grew up with a bit of that nurturing mother hen sort of thing going on.”

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Nster.com