AI Summary
5 min read“I don’t have a memory of coming into awareness of my mother’s crime,” says novelist Harriet Clark. “It must have been explained to me, but I don’t recall who explained it.” Clark was eleven months old when her mother, Judith Clark, drove the getaway car in a 1981 Brinks robbery that left a security guard and two police officers dead. Judith was a member of a radical offshoot of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. She was sentenced to 75 years to life. For 37 years, Harriet visited her every Saturday at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Her new novel, The Hill, draws directly from that experience. The book is not a memoir, but it is deeply autobiographical: a story about a daughter who learns to mother herself inside the strange, fixed routine of prison visits, and about what it means to love someone whose crime shaped your entire life.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:52) **Spider-Man: Brand New Day – Director Destin Daniel Cretton** - Cretton discusses his approach to the latest Spider-Man film, focusing on Peter Parker’s isolation and the personal themes he brought to the story.
- 2 (12:17) **From Group Home to Filmmaking: The Lessons of “Short Term 12”** - Cretton reflects on his humbling experience working in a group home and how it shaped his breakout film.
- 3 (17:11) **The Power of Storytelling in “Just Mercy”** - Cretton discusses his film about lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s fight against death row injustice.
- 4 (21:54) **A Hippie Mom, A VHS Camera, and a Forbidden Spider-Man Comic** - Cretton describes his childhood on Maui and how his mother’s strict media rules fostered his creativity.
- 5 (27:21) **The Recurring Theme of Loss and a Complicated Father** - Cretton connects the recurring themes of isolation and loss in his films to his own childhood and his relationship with his father.
- 6 (33:15) **Novelist Harriet Clark: Growing Up in the Shadow of Prison** - Terry Gross introduces the second segment, focusing on Harriet Clark, whose mother was a getaway driver for a fatal 1981 Brink’s robbery.
- 7 (36:11) **Learning About the Crime and the “Holding Container” of Prison** - Clark reads from her novel and describes how she came to understand her mother’s crime and imprisonment.
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Show Notes
Also, we hear from Harriet Clark. She was a baby when her mother was a getaway driver of a robbery of a Brink’s truck in 1981. The robbers were members of a radical offshoot of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. For 37 years, Clark spent Saturdays visiting her mother in prison. “She figured out how to mother me in some of the most difficult conditions possible,” Clark tells Terry Gross. Her novel, The Hill, draws on her experience visiting her mother in prison.
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