All the Tiny Beauties

Who would you be—or have the courage to become—if you’d been born into a different time and circumstance?

Join us for a discussion of Jenn Scott’s novel, All the Tiny Beauties, as she and Andrea Gough discuss the shifting notions—and cultural expectations—of self through generations, as they relate to the pages of this novel, the decades that comprise it, and the particular place that one calls home.

Spanning 90 years in Oakland, California, All the Tiny Beauties begins with a kitchen fire that sends the reclusive Webster Jackson to the home of his new neighbor, who discovers him on her doorstep wearing a lacy peignoir, his house in flames. Unable to take responsibility for this lonely eccentric, Colleen reaches out to Webb’s estranged daughter, Debra, and finds him a live-in companion, a young adult reeling from the loss of her childhood friend. As Webb’s past comes to light, we learn of the women whose lives shaped his own: his refined and coddling mother; his ex-wife Beverly, a frustrated former beauty queen who refashions herself into a force of will and a master manipulator; and Hila Firestone, a home economics teacher who opens Webb’s world, accepting and even encouraging his predilection for women’s clothing and affairs of the home. Moving among perspectives and generations, the stories of these characters intertwine, the older Webb forming a friendship with his young housemate, Hannah, a relationship that defies age and expectation and that changes their trajectories. Together, they confront not only the decisions that have shaped them, but who they might have become without the harsh expectations of others. Who might they have become if they had shunned fear? Or if they’d found themselves born in another time, another place?

This discussion will seek to ask questions about the fragility of self, as well as larger questions about the constraints society places on us as we seek to form fully realized and genuine lives in an ever-changing and demanding world—but especially within the context of the beautiful, culturally diverse, and complicated place we call home, Oakland, California.

Jenn Scott’s debut collection, Her Adult Life, was longlisted for the PEN America/Bingham Award in 2018. Her work has appeared in journals including Fiction, Gettysburg Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Santa Monica Review, and Gulf Coast. A native of Pennsylvania, she now lives and writes and waits tables in Oakland, California.

Andrea Gough has made a career of asking big questions and getting students to wrestle with them. She has developed and taught discussion-based curricula in history, English, and creative writing, with a particular interest in the ways stories can unsettle us, expand our thinking, and make us see the world differently. Her study of English and history has taken her from U.C. Berkeley to the Exeter Humanities Institute to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, where she was a recipient of the Sarah D. Barder Outstanding Educator Fellowship. At the heart of Andrea's teaching is a passion for using literature as a way to question, connect, provoke, and imagine what might be possible.