“It began with a question: ‘How do you know when to force someone to be treated against their will?’”
Aviv says.
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Revisiting that story for the collection, Aviv felt she had overlooked a crucial aspect: Bishop's role as a mother.
“I was really into the idea of a psychiatric case study,” she admits.
“But that narrow focus allowed for the interiority of one person and not the other part of that dynamic.”
Widening the Lens
The collection culminates with the story of Alice Munro and her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner. Aviv's reporting on Munro's partner's abuse of Skinner won a George Polk award.
In the book version, Aviv restructures the narrative to reveal Munro's Alzheimer's and her limitations only at the end, after building a complete world.
Aviv says her ideal assignment now “would tell an entire life.”
She wants to capture the full complexity of human relationships, especially the mother-daughter bond, which she finds “perhaps more than any other, seems to defy a fixed point of view.”
When Aviv went into labor with her first child, she brought court records to the hospital and began reading them after giving birth.
She sees this as a reflection of her desire to cling to her old identity as a writer—the ideal her mother instilled.
“I guess you convince yourself that what you write is the only way the story could have been written,” she says.
You Won’t Get Free of It arrives at a time when motherhood in America is increasingly politicized. But Aviv's book remains discourse-free, focused on storytelling rather than argument.
“I fundamentally feel that the child I have is becoming the self that they were already going to become,” she says.
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“I can hinder or help, but the creation lies with them.”
