Jennifer Oko is a novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Her memoir Lying Together was a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice.” Just Emilia is her third novel. She lives in Washington, DC with her family.

The other night, I was emerging from the NYC subway on my way to visit my mom in my childhood home when I got a text from a young friend of mine. She sent me a song to listen to, and a pitch for a promotional idea for my forthcoming novel, Just Emilia. When I read her message, I almost laughed out loud:

“When you get a chance, give this song a listen and let me know if you’d be up for doing a TikTok video moving around/smiling/dancing/showing off the book to it. Katie Gavin is a popular singer amongst my demographic (20 somethings, queer, very online) currently on tour. Tune is about parenting yourself/generations of women.”

Trying to cultivate book reviews on Goodreads is more my speed. Filming myself bouncing around like a giddy lunatic seemed like a ridiculous proposition. But with just a month to go before Just Emilia launches, I have fully embraced the fact that if I want my multi-generational novel to reach a multi-generational readership, I would be remiss if I did not listen to the wisdom of someone almost three decades younger than I am. Which, coincidentally, is the spread of time between my three main characters: Em, Emilia, and Millie are the same woman, at 17, 47, and 77, trapped together in an elevator on the anniversary of a traumatic event. All to say, in the course of writing and promoting this novel, I’ve been working very hard to listen to the wisdom of women who are in entirely different phases of life than I am.

It turns out that Katie Gavin has wisdom in spades. As I wove through a seemingly endless flow of pedestrians while heading up Broadway, I popped in my AirPods. Immediately, Gavin’s song—The Baton— kicked me into a bittersweet emotional overload.

“I would tell my daughter/She must be her own mother/‘Cause I can only take her/As far as I can go”

Tears began to stream down my face. My young friend was right. This song could be an anthem for Just Emilia, which in many ways is a meditation on navigating mother-daughter relationships while learning to care for yourself.

“She’d join a kind of relay/I’d pass her the baton and/I’d say you better run”

I took a deep breath, stepped way out of my comfort zone, held up my phone, turned the camera towards my face, and hit record as Gavin sang on.

“So go on, girl/It’s out of my hands/I can’t come where you’re going/But time unfurls/And you’ll understand”

Just Emilia launches just ten days after my own daughter graduates from high school, launching her into a new big chapter of her life, one that is, as Gavin says, largely out of my hands. And while launching a novel has nothing on supporting my daughter through this enormous transition, there are similarities in terms of taking leaps of faith, trusting the process, and embracing generational change.

By the time I reached the apartment, I had played The Baton at least three more times and sent it to my daughter, as well as a number of my friends, including to my TikTok-fluent pal.

I don’t know if the video we created from that moment will sell any books, but as I write this, it is my second most watched TikTok.

My mother, happily, is a big fan of Just Emilia. She’s been eager to help promote it. When I suggested an email blast she could forward around, she rejected it flat out. Too impersonal. And as much as she enjoyed the song when I played it for her, forget about a TikTok post. Instead, she asked me to make her a flyer. Something simple she could share with her friends. On paper. No website URL. No QR code. Just ink on a white piece of paper that she could print out.

Three generations. Three approaches to promoting a book. For Just Emilia, that just makes so much sense.

Just Emilia by Jennifer Oko

When Em, Emilia, and Millie are trapped in an elevator for hours, the three generations of women realize they have crossed each other’s paths. Or rather, they are all on the same path because they are all the same person, each from a different era of life. Em, the youngest, is a troubled teenager plagued by her mental health. Emilia is quickly approaching her midlife, something she feels utterly unprepared for, and Millie is trying to mend her relationship with her estranged daughter. The women begin to string together memories and uncover trauma from their past that is difficult and relieving to face. They begin to realize the challenges they can overcome by learning to trust themselves and where they will end up.

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