Jen struggles with supporting her husband and her complicated feelings about his actions and innocence. Do you think she’s too afraid of his family to question him more? How does family influence your descisions?
How did you interpret the reactions from the media and social platforms throughout the novel? How are these mediums helpful or harmful to the people at the center of the story?
The tragedy that sparks the divide in Riley and Jen’s relationship exposes some fault lines in their shared history. When is a friendship worth hanging on to, and when is it time to let go? How did their bond change by the end of the novel, for better or worse?
Were there parts of the novel that made you uncomfortable, and why?
What do you think of the book’s title? What does it encapsulate about this story? Who are “We” and “Them” in the title?
Enhance Your Book Club
“What we didn’t understand is that adulthood would be a relentless series of beginnings.” Discuss how you invisioned adult life as a kid. What is something that you were not expecting to experience—a new city, new job prospects, or a different lifestyle?
Riley tells Jen, “It’s a privilege to never think about race.” How has privilege affected your life? How has the absence of privilege affected your life? Discuss an event where you recognized that privilege affected the outcome.
A 2014 study found that three out of four white people have no nonwhite friends. Are you surprised by this statistic? How does where you grew up affect the friends you make into adulthood?
A Conversation with Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
We Are Not Like Them opens with the police shooting of an unarmed Black teenage boy. Why did you choose this event as the catalyst, and how did you work to get it right?
From the very beginning we knew we wanted to tell the story of a lifelong friendship between two women, a white woman and a Black woman, and explore how race impacts that relationship in unexpected ways. The issue of shootings of unarmed Black men was very much at the forefront of a national conversation when we started the book （and, sadly, remains so）， capturing headlines across the country and sparking a movement—not to mention a lot of inflamed feelings and divisiveness. We were attracted to the idea of humanizing this hot-button issue and to the opportunity to foster a conversation about race through the lens of one powerful （and wholly relatable） friendship. Also, one of Christine’s close （white） friends from childhood is married to a （white） cop, and this premise was loosely inspired by wondering what would happen if Christine found herself in a similar scenario as Riley.
Jo brought the point of view of a longtime journalist to the project and we tried to interview as many people as possible, not just to make sure our portrayal was accurate, but to make sure we captured the different emotions of everyone involved. We spoke to police officers （and their spouses）， district attorneys, community activists, and the mothers of shooting victims, and read and researched firsthand accounts and statistics.
How did your own friendship inspire you to write this book?
We became incredibly close while working together on Jo’s last novel, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, which Christine published at Simon & Schuster. As our friendship evolved so did our conversations about race. We knew we were lucky and privileged to even be able to have them. Statistics show that fewer than 10 percent of people have a close friend of another race. We were energized by the idea of working together in a unique way, as both friends and collaborators, and leveraging our relationship to tell a story that would help readers have their own conversations about race and think more deeply about their own friendships.
Your novel shows how stereotyping and racism can seep into even the closest of relationships. Why did you choose to show two characters experiencing this dynamic within a treasured friendship?
It’s hard to have a friend of another race in America. The hard truth is that in our country, race permeates almost all aspects of our lives in one way or another, even our intimate relationships, and this story attempts to pull the curtain back to show how that happens in ways we don’t always realize or can’t avoid. It was important to us that both Black women and white women be able to relate to our characters. We chose to write in the first person so that we could dig deep into their minds and give voice to some of the difficult thoughts （spoken and unspoken） and pitfalls about race and racism from both perspectives. Our goal was to show the very real and relatable challenges people might have in trying to understand another’s experience and mindset. It’s the greatest goal of the novel to spark empathy and that was what we hope to do here, to offer a bridge over what can sometimes feel like a yawning gap in understanding and awareness, and help readers recognize and reckon with some of their own blind spots and beliefs.
Two different voices and experiences are captured in We Are Not Like Them, but you avoid creating a sense of false balance around the shooting. How did you approach the dual perspectives?
Our world is so polarized right now, and the issue that animates our plot—a police shooting—invites a lot of impassioned opinions and feelings. We were aware it risked lending itself to a good guy/bad guy dichotomy pretty quickly, and we wanted to avoid that at all costs. Readers may come in with preconceived notions, so we had to be careful that our audience didn’t “side” with any one woman over the other, but the richness of the read comes from the seesaw back-and-forth between identifying with both. It was vital that we be clear that we didn’t have an agenda and were committed to showing the many nuances and complexities.
We wanted our characters to be real and not just representative, so we also spent a long time talking about who they were, what motivated them, what scared them, what they loved, what they hated. We came up with lists about their likes and dislikes, their passions and fears, etc., much of which never even made it into the book in the literal sense, but colors all of their experiences and reactions. We loved this idea that a somewhat random twist of fate brought these two young girls together who may not have become close friends had they met in another way, or had they met at any other time （when their differences would have been more pronounced）。 In many ways, Riley and Jen are a somewhat odd match, even aside from their race, and it was fun to explore the intangible bonds that pull and hold us to each other even when a relationship is unlikely, and even when it’s tested.
It was important to us that each character earned and deserved both sympathy and frustration in equal measure. Our hope is that the reader will say, “I can see why she did/thought that” when it comes to both Riley and Jen, even if there are moments when you want to scream at them too. All the while, all through the ups and downs, we wanted the reader to be able to root for not just the two characters, but, most important, the friendship itself.
Can you tell us about your shared writing process?
Thank the Lord for Google Docs. We’ve tried everything in terms of collaboration and it took a long time, but we finally came up with a process that works. We discuss the big ideas and broad strokes in a comprehensive outline first. And then, chapter by chapter, one of us takes a pass at the blank page. This is often the hardest part… especially the first chapter. （We can’t tell you how many drafts we went through there.） And then we trade it back and forth, working in the suggestion and commenting modes. Then we’ll get on the phone, or video chat or meet in person, to go over the things that can’t easily be resolved on the page.