Sarah McCoy: On Sensitivity Readers, Performative Gender Roles, Finding Purpose, and Her Novel, "Mustique Island"
Mustique Island, the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Sarah McCoy, is a lyrical masterclass in escapism. McCoy expertly exposes the intricacies of family dynamics and self-discovery in a gripping tale that takes place in the seemingly idyllic background of Mustique. Arriving in the tropical paradise with the hopes of rebuilding her life and her relationships with her daughters, divorcee Willy May quickly learns there is more to the private island than the glitz and glamour provided by its celebrity occupants. Mustique Island is an essential summer read.
I spoke with Sarah about how a sensitivity reader helped transform her work, the communal nature of identity, and how to find purpose while living without regrets.
Emma Mackenzie: On the surface, the idyllic landscape of Mustique Island seems to provide a blank canvas for Willy May to rebuild her life. As she designs and constructs her home and settles in there, the real history of the island comes into sharper focus. What was it about this physical space that inspired you to use it as a setting?
Sarah McCoy: I’ve had a lifelong obsession with islands. Geographical ones and psychological ones. I guess one could argue that islands are in my blood. I’m Puerto Rican and during the writing of my first novel, I did a great deal of research on Caribbean culture: the original Taino and Arawak people who were colonized by the Spanish and French and the British. Each colonizing nation claimed ownership over an island, often right next to each other. As you can imagine, it created a unique socio-economic environment. Territorial identities are separated by water instead of lines in the dirt.
That being a part of my lineage, I thought I was familiar with all of the Caribbean. But no, I’d never heard of Mustique. So, I did what any want-to-know-it-all does, I searched for every document related, scouring the internet for books and ordering many from England. One source was particularly intriguing: Colin Tennant’s autobiography. In it, there was a snippet about a Texas beauty queen who received a fortune in a divorce settlement from her British ex-husband but had no place to land herself having been ex-communicated from ranking society.
Suddenly, I saw her, I heard her Texas twang, I knew this woman. She was isolated and desperate to belong somewhere. Colin went on to explain that he sold her a plot, she built a gorgeous house on it named Firefly, and her grown adult daughters came over. The story had seeded. A woman named Willy May, her daughters Hilly and Joanne, an island called Mustique, royals, colonial privilege, celebrity excess… It was all there looking for someone to ask the question: can you build your own paradise? The answer is this book.
EM: You spoke about using a sensitivity reader in your acknowledgments, can you explain a little about the process and what Isabelle Felix did to help expand the fullness of the work? What would you say to those who are reluctant to use a sensitivity reader?
SM: I am so glad you keyed in on this. I will sing the praises of Isabelle Felix for as long as I live. I’ve had the unique privilege of working with exceedingly talented editors in my career and I must tell you, Isabelle is one of the best. She loved this book enough to challenge me, as an author and a person, to make it even better. My relationship with her is exactly what I love about writing and storytelling. I have never met her in person and when I started working with her, I didn’t know her background, what she looked like, where she lived, much less anything else. All I was told was that a sensitivity reader had my new novel, which I welcomed. I’ve had sensitivity readers for my last three books, so I was familiar with the process. But Isabelle was an experience. I am a different author and a better Sarah than I was before I met her.
She helped me discover that true open-mindedness is being able to admit that you don’t know all the answers, but you are willing to change yourself to find them. She dared me to question my beliefs and my unconscious biases.
As I mentioned, I’m half Puerto Rican. Without really considering, I had leaned on my close ties with my Latinx family as a kind of crutch. I was of the minority so I must know the struggles of my people, I told myself. I assumed that growing up in the loving folds of my abuelos, titis, tios, and primos, had provided an innate sensitivity to marginalized communities. I would go so far as to admit that I would’ve taken offense if anyone suggested that I was anything but a champion to people of color. I grew up with my grandpa explaining that my Boricuan family was like the rainbow—all colors—and the evidence was in every relative’s face I saw.
That said, Isabelle helped me see that when you live in a predominantly white culture and are perceived as predominantly white, the life lens from which you experience the world is dramatically different. She pointed out the murky places in Mustique Island. The ones we don’t want to look at. The shadows that gather between what we think is our majority-to-minority relationship and the reality. She gave me permission to ask questions of her and of myself. But not to a “you are right” or “you are wrong” conclusion. There is no black or white answer. There is no black or white. Period.
I’m also a sufferer of perfectionism. So, in addition to helping me navigate the cultural sensitivity waters, Isabelle helped me see that there is no such thing as perfect. Perfection is the fuel of colonial imperialism. It does not exist. In fact, imperfection is what defines us as human. Our flaws remind us that we are ever evolving, growing, and transforming. That we can evolve, grow, and transform. Just because we thought and acted one way in the past doesn’t mean we have to do the same in the present or in the future. Therein lies the beauty of life.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Change doesn’t usually feel good at the time. I cut one hundred pages of the book and rewrote it start-to-finish in the last weeks before the my publisher’s production deadline. This happened to coincide with one of the few vacations I took with my husband in 2021. I think I left the hotel room once. I wrote from sunup to sundown with the beach outside my sliding glass door. The only time I dipped a toe in the ocean was by moonlight after I’d reached my rewriting goals. And I don’t regret a minute.
EM: Each part of the novel lets the reader into a different character's perspective. How do you work to create such a distinct tonal shift in your writing that seems so specific and particular to the character whose lens through which we are watching the events unfold?
SM: It’s not a conscious choice I make in my books. Stories come to me through multiple voices. I never trust just one. I look at my role like a forensic investigator trying to dig out the whole truth in the fiction, which is an oxymoron. (This may speak more to my own psychoses.)
I can’t honestly tell you how I hear characters. That’s one of the magical (or loco) parts of our craft. Willy May’s voice came to me the instant I read the brief description of her in Colin Tennant’s autobiography. I lived in El Paso, Texas, for nearly a decade so I am familiar with that distinct drawl. I imagined it salted with a British accent (ala Madonna) after years of living in England. Her lens was something I had some experiential knowledge— in reverse. Willy May went from the dust of Texas to the lush sea. I went from a childhood splashing in the Caribbean to the parched sands of Texas. I am also closer to her age and could relate to her frustration in being labeled “past her bloom” by social standards while still feeling she was in the process of blooming into herself. That’s certainly a theme I was drawn to throughout the novel—challenging our conventional standards. Who made them? and why do we still follow so many that are outdated or never should’ve been to begin with? Willy May’s seesaw between self-confidence and lack of self-confidence; between believing she knows what she believes and then suddenly not believing anything she believed; that’s something I wrestle with on a daily basis, too.
Her daughters Hilly and Joanne were wonderful characters to dive into. Sisters have always fascinated me. Probably because I have no sisters. I am the eldest of two brothers. My mother, however, is the youngest of three girls. I was the first niece born to the family, so I sort of grew up as the add-on to their trio. I loved spending time with them, mesmerized by their sister secrets, squabbles, unspoken connections, and unified female strength. They loved hard, but they were also the ones who could wound each other the deepest. Through it all, the magnetism between them is eternal. I love my brothers with all my heart, but the sister-brother relationship is much different than the sister-sister relationship.
Hilly and Joanne have their own distinct talents that they value and devalue by virtue of comparison. Their characters developed from those distinctions and yet, they are in many ways yin and yang. Linked, no matter how different they may be. They need each other to complete the whole. So that was really interesting for me to write. I’ve never taken on two siblings like that before. To be honest, I’m thrilled you felt the distinct tonal shifts were successful! That certainly was a goal: to write family members who are discovering their unique identities while undeniably part of a collective unit.
EM: There was a real sense in the novel that self-knowledge and understanding could only be truly accessed through knowing others - when your characters were isolated they also felt stuck and trapped. Do you think your own communities have allowed you to know yourself better, and particularly how does this manifest as a writer?
SM: Absolutely! I have always been something of a loner—on the far side of the introvert spectrum. I thrive in isolation and yet, I’ve learned through the years that I desperately need my writing tribe. Everyone needs a community. The difference is how we choose to define that. The orthodox perspective of being “communal” imbues it with distinctly extrovert attributes: people being with lots of other people enjoying all the people-to-people communing. But that’s where I ask, what if we challenge what we think we know and believe: is that really the definition of community?
So, let’s imagine we are at a large party. If we engage in five-minute conversations about the weather and the wine and the fun time with every person in attendance, have we established ourselves in a community? For me, that sounds utterly exhausting and not at all successful in truly knowing anyone, least of all myself. In actually, that scenario would make me, personally, feel more isolated.
Back in my late thirties, I stopped berating myself for being introverted. I embraced it and renewed my mental definition of what that meant. I need community every single hour of every single day, but mine consists of a focal nuclear group. A handful of friends that know me, the real Sarah McCoy. The ones with whom I share my ugly fears and failures. The ones who are front row cheering for my successes. The ones who call me when they sense I need them without my having to ask. The ones who text me encouragement and love out of the blue. We may not even be in physical proximity but when we are finally toe to toe tucked into the couch, it feels as natural as a Tuesday night. Because in spirit, we always were.
I’m truly fortunate that I’ve found a group of writer friends like this. I also have a circle of friends unrelated to publishing. I have another group that are exclusively women, and then the coeds that my husband and I share. I’m always open to meeting new people who are searching for true, lifelong friendship. But I don’t consider everyone I have a lovely conversation with “in my community.” There’s an element of time and proofing that’s necessary for genuine closeness to germinate.
All are components of community. Collectively, they help me know myself through different lenses. No individual is one persona exclusively. We are all multifaceted, reflecting different shades of ourselves depending on how the light is shining. That’s being human and a power that sets us apart from the rest of the natural world—our ability to choose to change ourselves.
EM: You take great care exposing the ways femininity can be a kind of performance, from Willy May copying the seduction methods of actresses she’s seen on the silver screen to Hilly giving her public persona a new name. Your characters seem to find their footing as they begin to cast the importance of that behaviour aside. Was this a conscious choice on your part or did it naturally unfold as you were writing?
SM: Yes! And no. You’ve hit on an astute point here. As a woman living in a very performance-driven era, I admit that I struggle with who I am publicly and who I am privately. Or, more so (on the heels of your last question), who I choose to be publicly and who I choose to be privately.
I see a lot of folks on social media memeing each other, “You do you.” I had a neighbor say that to me and I thought, Okay, thank you, but… what exactly do you mean? Because isn’t that what we’re all striving for every day—to do our lives?
For women, I think it’s particularly hard. We have all these qualifiers and gender role definitions placed on our shoulders regarding what a good woman, good daughter, good wife, good sister, good parent, good worker, good neighbor, good lady, good-goody good YOU should look like. And, well, to be blunt, it’s all BS, in my humble opinion. Because I’ve known women in my life who played by those rules and from the outside were picture perfect in every way. But behind closed doors, they were judgmental, catty and miserable for it. Because deep-down, we all fall hugely short of the unrealistic paradigm. Why are we trapping each other in glass-ceiling boxes of femininity? It should be unleashed to empower us as it was meant to do.
This was at the forefront of women’s history during the 1970s movement, carrying us straight into 2017’s Women’s March and today. So, writing about this topic was simultaneously conscious and organic.
EM: Throughout ‘Mustique Island’ your characters search for a sense of belonging and purpose, do you feel like writing is your own purpose and call you tell me a little about your own journey to finding that?
SM: I do. Truth be told, I’m not proficient in any other skill but writing. I can’t draw a stick figure. Math makes me go cross-eyed. I love history, but I could never memorize all those dates. I am devoted to the theater arts but can’t act a fool in a folly. (It was my undergraduate minor degree—a focus on playwriting, far from the stage lights!) For a brief time in college, I had notions of being an Archeologist Major. But all it took was one full day dig and I knew it wasn’t my calling. I got my degree in Journalism and Public Relations because I loved being able to dig up stories with a pen and not a shovel. Like we’ve talked about a lot in this interview, I am a woman who fully believes that we are continuously evolving, reinventing, and transforming ourselves. We use the gifts and peculiarities that make us quirky to a greater purpose as only we can. We can discover new gifts, develop peculiarities, grow in areas that we might not have had anything to do with five, ten, or even forty years before. All that matters is that we use what is in our quiver to better the world.
I started in story-finding and quickly moved into story-telling. On graduating from college, I got a job as an Investor Relations Coordinator for a chemical company in Richmond, Virginia. For a couple years, while I chipped away at repaying my student loans, I wrote annual reports, press releases, executive speeches, that sort of thing. From nine to five, I sat at a desk typing out company copy and on the way home to my one-bedroom apartment, I’d swing by my local library branch to pick up novels. I read and wrote at night and all through my weekends. I couldn't say that writing was my calling yet, but I knew chemicals was certainly not. What I could say was that the hours I spent writing and reading filled me with more joy, inspiration, ambition, and excitement than any other. So, I gave it a shot. I applied to the Creative Writing MFA Program at Old Dominion University in Virginia with all I really had, scripts for plays I’d written. I got accepted as a scriptwriter, gave my boss my thirty-days, signed up for more student loans, packed my bags, and went south. The three years I spent in-residency writing, reading, and teaching undergrads felt like a rebirth. I came out of that short but monumental period of my life with the certainty that I could not do anything else with it but write.
EM: When Hilly is experiencing a great loss take place in front of her eyes you wrote “the ancient myths, Bible stories, and singalong fairy tales all came to uncompromising ends. Sacrifice was required.” Do you feel there have been sacrifices in your own life that have enabled your writing?
SM: Sacrifice is always required… of everyone for anything they are passionate about. Think about it. From the most difficult to the most joyful event, some element of sacrifice occurred. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those woebegone oblational types. But anything worth something to us requires us to expose our most tender emotions (love) and be willing to potentially get hurt by it. It’s the sacrifice of ego. You can’t have the heroic ending, the happily-ever-after, or the promise of life eternal without recognizing the sacrifice. It’s nature’s law. You put a seed in the earth; it’s got to be buried in the dark, die a little, have its shell crack so that a new thing can grow. You can’t have the glory of a flower without that process. Sacrifice.
EM: When incorporating real life public figures into your work and creating fictional characters from them, do you encounter any particular challenges? How tied did you feel the public sense of those figures that already exists?
SM: Dealing with real-life figures is a salsa dance on a cliff’s edge. This book is not autobiography fiction. That’s its own genre, which I’ve dabbled in with some of my other books. The Mapmaker’s Children is a dual narrative with the historical protagonist being real-life Sarah Brown, the daughter of abolitionist John Brown. There was such little archival information about her that I was able to conjecture my own character composite.
In Mustique Island, the spark of inspiration for the three protagonists (Willy May, Hilly, and Joanne) came from real people but everything beyond that is entirely of my own imagining. These three women are surrounded by public figures whose lives have been well-documented in the press and further speculated by the world. Princess Margaret, the Tennants, Mick Jagger—you can go online and pull up books written about and by all of these individuals. I carefully chose to include the information already suggested (gossip magazine) or document (newspapers) in public domain. Also, no matter who or what about a person, I try to illustrate them in a light that attempts to unveil a degree of understanding. Even the strangest, most inconceivable personality type, he/she is a person with feelings. The author’s job isn’t just to write a story, it’s a calling to foster new comprehension in a reader. So, I ask, what could have made this real person participate in these events (admirable to detestable and everything between)? That’s historical fiction.
Lastly on this topic, I don’t like reading historical fiction that casts judgment on any person, place, or thing. I understand that statement could be controversial; I’m not here to argue with anyone. It’s a personal perspective. I don’t think it’s fair to judge historical figures by the information we have at our fast-forward modern viewpoint. God knows, I wouldn’t want anyone in the future judging me!
EM: The novel’s narrative is centered on the axis of the constantly evolving nature of the mother/daughter relationship. Do you feel this is an area you will continue to explore in your work going forward?
SM: No doubt. I’m very close with the women in my family: my mom, my grandma (Mama Maria, to whom the book is dedicated), and my aunts (titis). As I said earlier, I have no sisters. I write a lot of my own imaginings of what it would be like to have one—to be a sister to a sister. I don’t have a daughter either. So, in similar fashion, that mother-daughter dynamic fascinates me. I know what it’s like to be a daughter but how does it feel to be a mother to a daughter?
The writing trope is “Write what you know.” But as I’m sure you’ve come to glean about me, I don’t particularly like rules passed down regarding things that may or may not still be germane. Traditions are lovely, and I appreciate advice from my elders but… there’s something to be said for keeping your mind unharnessed to the past—particularly other people’s pasts. The absence of experiential knowledge fosters honest curiosity. We can be our most truthful selves when we’re free to say, I don’t know, but I’d like to know more.
I write a lot about the evolution of all relationships. Mothers and daughters, yes, but also fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, lovers, enemies, friends… The human capacity to be one way in this moment and completely different tomorrow never fails to shock and awe me. The dichotomy is both inspiring and terrifying. And yet, it is in that chasm of potential change where ultimate freedom resides. The challenge is, do we have the courage to step off and evolve into a stronger, wiser, better version of ourselves. Do we have the courage to keep stepping off over and over and over?
EM: Towards the end of the novel, Willy May asks Joanne if change is possible - seemingly without realising that throughout the narrative her character has already changed very gradually into an almost entirely different person. Your exploration of the nature of time, memory, and regret and how these things intertwine in your characters’ internal world was thought provoking. Do you believe there is a universality to these concepts of “a place unreachable, a time in life long past, a feeling that could not be replicated” that can drive people into becoming the people they were always meant to be? Has regret and memory ever motivated you in your own life?
SM: You know, I’ve never considered if regret has motivated my life… I guess therein is the answer to your question! I can’t say that I carry regrets. Not because I haven’t done things that I wish I hadn’t or that I wish certain events hadn’t occurred. But I don’t see the sense in holding regrets, counting them up like little thorns on my stem to prick my finger bloody over and over. If I’ve done something wrong, I try to make amends. If that’s not possible, I aim for forgiveness. Trust and believe, I am no Pollyanna. It’s far more selfish than that. I’ve simply seen far too many people that I love deeply carry regrets with them that end up making them bitter and sad. The person holding all the disappointment is the most affected. I don’t think I could live, never mind be life-motivated, with regrets as the source. I still cry every time I read or watch the film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The tragedy of so many regretful actions! It kills me. So no, regret isn’t a motivator for me.
Memory, however, is altogether different animal. Memory is magic. It’s something I seek to capture and yet, its truth evades me time and time again. It defies our human reins on it. I would go so far as to say that for me, Memory is the exact opposite of regret. Another definition is legacy. And that is a significant influencer in my life: what legacy am I making in this moment? What legacy did I make yesterday that brought me to this moment? What legacy is waiting for me to fulfill tomorrow? It gives every minute worth and responsibility. It empowers each breath with purpose, and it certainly informs all my writing.
Sarah McCoy is the New York Times, USA Today and international bestselling author of the novels Marilla of Green Gables, The Mapmaker’s Children; The Baker’s Daughter and The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico. She previously taught English and writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She currently lives with her husband, an orthopedic sports surgeon, and their dog, Gilly, in North Carolina.